Lightburn 1.2.0, Ruida controller.
Dual laser setup. (2 heads on same gantry, move together)
Getting system setup, everything working fine and working nicely as long as laser 2 offset is disabled/0,0.
Once I configured the 2nd laser offset, the frame process (after sending job to controller and pressing frame on the controller) is all wacky. It frames the design area AND the negative offset of the second laser (as if the 2nd laser was on the opposite side it really is).
How can I get the frame to reliably work for seeing the work area for one piece?
You should keep the offset at 0, and set up the machine as if it is half the size of the entire bed.
That, I think is a pretty poor suggestion, assuming it’s not a joke.
Cut your working area you paid big $ for in half… I’d think there would be a ‘correct’ or better solution that would work properly.
If it does the negative then two will never work together. Not to mention it would probably get a ‘slop’ error.
Not a joke at all? It’s a dual head machine. I think he is trying to set up a machine that is for instance a 60" wide machine. The heads are fixed at half the distance of the bed. So you only set up lightburn to be half the size of the bed. You then turn on laser two if you want the 2nd laser head to fire. Dual omtech 130 owner here 
Thanks for the clarification. 
I see them with the heads right next to each other, only about 30mm apart. Back to back would be a better description.
Seems a funny way configure them this way. At least to me, but I do not own one, so I assume it’s justified or they wouldn’t do it.
Does this mean the ‘framing’ issue is working correctly on his machine?
So each laser is limited to ‘their’ half of the machine?
Ahh I guess I have seen machines like that. I think the machines you are talking about, typically have a lower wattage tube for engraving and a higher wattage tube for cutting, while maximizing your work area. The dual machine I’m talking about have them set apart so that you can cut two separate pieces of material, at the same time, but you only get half of the working area. OP didn’t specify what set up he had. @bigredapes have you been able to move forward yet or are you still having issues?
I have a high/low wattage machine where the heads are right next to each other. I understand the use case for splitting the machine in half, but that’s not what I bought the machine to do – I need the full work envelope. Expectation is to be able to do some engraving with low wattage tube and then cut out with high wattage tube on a large piece as one job and not needing to reposition or restart a job.
So far lightburn is able to do that except for the framing is getting all messed up (doing frame from control panel because computer is far from machine). Setting up second laser offset and choosing which layers get cut by which laser the design works perfectly, just not able to see/understand where the design is going to get cut because the frame process is wacky.
I gotcha, sorry for the confusion. I noticed your post hadn’t had any replies and wanted to help. I have zero knowledge on those types of setups. Hope somebody with more knowledge can get it figured out!
You did… Might not have been helpful to @bigredapes but it was me… no reason to apologize IMHO.
Sounds like the best use of a two tube system. Low power for engraving and high for the cutting…
Here’s much more specifics.
2 heads, abut 95mm apart in the x axis. Cutting laser on left(laser1) and engraving on right (laser2). Designed and setup for cutting on one and engraving on the other.
The machine origin is top right, and I keep job origin at top right to match that. Did a bunch of testing and calibrating and ended up with 2nd laser offsets of (95.4,-0.50) as typed into lightburn.
When I tell lightburn to disable 2nd laser offset, everything works fine (with respect to frame). The indicator starts in top right corner, moves to bottom right, bottom left, top left and then back to top right.
Enable 2nd laser offset.
Send same job – note, even now there is NO layers that use 2nd laser, its still just a single layer only using laser 1.
Do frame on the ruida controller.
First moves pointer from top right corner origin spot 95mm to the right, so the pointer is directly under where the 2nd laser head was at origin location, then moves down in y the height of the piece to a bottom right corner offset by offset to the right by 95mm. Then moves to bottom left corner of really where the piece will be cut at for bottom left corner, then top left corner of the real location of the piece, and then back to origin spot.
This means that the frame position is inclusive of an extra block to the right the width of the laser offset amount, but that block is the dead space that is never going to be used. It means that my frame command is going to travel extra to the right by the laser offset amount in an area that is not going to be cut by either laser. It would almost make sense if the extra section was on the far left of the piece, because that’s the side that the cutter would “over travel” to line up the second head to do engraving on the same piece (meaning the first head would go farther left by the offset amount to show that there is room for the extents of the travel of the machine), but that’s NOT the behavior of the machine during Frame – the extra “2nd laser” space of the frame is on the wrong side.
I am suspicious that Lightburn is not calculating the sign (+/-) of the laser offset and handling all origin possibilities when calculating “Process TopLeft/Right” Would be nice if there were an option to “include 2nd laser positions in frame” enable/disable in the device settings
OR … am I doing something completely wrong here?
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