I’m not really able to get the ‘zero’ functionality to work like I expect; I am coming from a UGS workflow standpoint, so I kinda expect to be able to hit ‘zero here’ wherever the head is positioned at and the software takes that as the new ‘home’ or ‘return to zero’ position. However, whenever I do that, it appears that the Home button ignores this and wants to yank the system down to the bottom left all the time.
Is there something I am missing? A configuration or a workflow I’ve got set up wrong? Does Lightburn even have a ‘go back to the zero position’ or a ‘zero here’ function?
Without home switches, GRBL assumes wherever the laser head is when it starts up is the home position. If you don’t position the head at the physical home position matching the machine origin before turning the power on, it’s “homed” wherever it woke up, which is rarely correct.
Follow this process:
There are some additional wrinkles, but that should eliminate the immediate problems.
The doc on how origins is relevant:
Note the various end-of-job options in the last section.
Yes, read and followed all that but it doesn’t seem to behave like you indicate it might.
Basically, I want to be able to move the head to any given point using the jog tool, hit a button, and have the software tell itself and/or the hardware “this is the new home zero point, all your stuff starts from here”. So then later when I jog the head around or if I have to abort a run, if I hit the Start button again, the head will return back to that zero point. Or if I hit a “return to the set zero position” button it does exactly that. In other words, what UGS does.
Right now I have to futz around with the 1% power turn beam on button and the different modes to get it to where I think it’s right, but I frequently get it wrong because the zero or home or whatever it’s actually referred to in Lightburn ignores whatever I told it and yanks the head all the way to the bottom left.
There is a distinction between the machine’s origin point, which is immutable after homing because it sets the controller’s coordinate system relative to the hardware frame, and the job origin point, which is the local origin relative to your design.
When you hit the Home button, the controller returns the laser head to the machine origin. That’s what it’s supposed to do: go to the Home position set with either automatic or manual homing.
Review the Current Position and User Origin sections of the doc to get a better understanding of what those do.
In addition, check the doc for the various Origin settings in the Move window:
I think it’ll do what you want after you sort out all the various options. Which, admittedly, takes a bit of puzzling.
