Head mounted camera

[toofazt (Steve)]

Has anyone made any progress with retrofitting a head mounted camera? If not, could someone direct me to a camera that may work so I can try to figure something out? Trying to get high accuracy (± 0.020") positioning.

[adammhaile (Adam Haile)]

LightBurn does not currently support a head mounted camera. Though it is in the works.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

Same as when this was asked before. Development has begun as @adammhaile says, but no ETA is provided.

How to obtain highest camera accuracy?

If you’re pointed at a small area, and the camera is hard mounted so it cannot move it’s possible. The accuracy of the camera is only going to be as good as the best mechanical accuracy you have on whatever is holding it - for example, if you were to drill a hole in the acrylic lid directly over the bed center, that would mean the camera angle and lateral position could not move, which would be ideal. That said, if your hinges have half a millimeter of slop in any direction, that will translat…

[toofazt (Steve)]

Could you direct me to the best camera for head mounting and using as a normal lightburn camera? You has linked to a Endoscope camera which seems like a good idea. Would any USB Endoscope style camera work?

[tmostad (Tim Mostad)]

.02 accuracy seems pretty optimistic unless you can look straight down the vertical axis of the laser beam. It would mean your focal point would vertically have to have even better than .02" accuracy. Presumably the camera would have to look at an angle from either the X or Y axis (or maybe both) and any vertical offset from perfect vertical focus plane would shift the laser point accordingly. Of course the delta error reduces as the camera angle approaches vertical. Just my .02 worth…

[toofazt (Steve)]

Once you know the offset of where the laser will cut in relation to the camera you could make that adjustment in your layout. As long as it’s repeatable with a rigid mount to the laser head I don’t see an issue.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

@toofazt

Could you direct me to the best camera for head mounting and using as a normal lightburn camera?

No, not yet. We are trying to tell you that LightBurn does not currently support a head-mounted camera. To make this as simple as possible, LightBurn currently supports a stationary camera, not one that can be moved around.

I was not providing a recommendation for an endoscope style camera. I was providing this:

@LightBurn

If you’re pointed at a small area, and the camera is hard mounted so it cannot move it’s possible. The accuracy of the camera is only going to be as good as the best mechanical accuracy you have on whatever is holding it - for example, if you were to drill a hole in the acrylic lid directly over the bed center, that would mean the camera angle and lateral position could not move, which would be ideal. That said, if your hinges have half a millimeter of slop in any direction, that will translate into half a millimeter of inaccuracy with camera placement too.

The head mounted camera feature should allow for better accuracy, especially with larger lasers. There hasn’t been significant progress on it yet, but I’m hoping to get some time in soon.

[toofazt (Steve)]

This is what I was referencing.

Mark Point Visual Cutting

The camera would be a lower resolution endoscopic cam, like this one:

[toofazt (Steve)]

I was thinking I could mount a camera to the head and just use it to align reference points on a piece of acrylic to cutout.

[adammhaile (Adam Haile)]

LightBurn does not, at this time, have support for that use-case either.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

You probably could, but if you’re wanting LightBurn to help you with that process, you’ll have to wait until the feature is coded and released. The camera won’t be in-line with the beam path, so there’s an offset to work out, and the image might be rotated if the camera isn’t perfectly mounted.