Framing is a good tool, but it is not precise enough for some purposes. I need to allign LASER with much better precision.
The image is only demonstrative. I need e.g. to navigate LASER to specified corners of a polygon.
Can you explain what you’re trying to achieve at a higher level and what challenge you’re facing? This will help guide your options.
I want to engrave some description to a material that already has holes to precise position. So any shift or rotation is not acceptable. I need to look to several points to ensure that position on monitor matches to real position on material.
Framing works fine if you have a piece of wood and several mm does not matter. Final boundary of object is created by cutter.
Here’s what I would suggest:
- Set Start From mode to Absolute Coords
- Enable fire button for laser and move laser to the exact position on the material where you want to position the shape. Make sure that “Show last position” is enabled in Laser window.
- Once the laser is positioned you should see a cross-hair in the workspace that indicates the last position
- Grap the corner of the hexagon then place it directly on top of the indicated laser position
Alternatively, you could use Print and Cut to achieve this. If you cannot guarantee a specific orientation of your material within the bed then Print and Cut may be superior since it will allow for rotation adjustment.
Now I have found why I get lost in this.
Click on “frame” hides laser position. This is a bug of Lightburn from my point of view. Light burn knows where a head is after framing finishes.
Anyway, clicking on jog moves laser head and shows a position. I can change jog distance. Other way is to fill “Move to position” with exact x and y position. This is quite clumsy. Also the safety cover prevents to navigate to exact position. The dot is not visible behind.
Testing to go where points an arrow:
Can you explain what this means? I’m not following. You may need to hit “Get position” to get the latest reported position.
You may want to come up with an entirely different way of approaching the alignment.
I understand you’re trying to align to an already marked location. Can you explain at a higher level what it is that you’re doing. There may be a way to avoid this entirely.
The frame is a standard operation thet moves LASER pointer around engraved area. Afrer clicking on Frame the on screen cursor with LASER position fails to display. It displays after jogging one step.
[quote=“berainlb”](You may want to come up with an entirely different way of approaching the alignment.)[/quote] I want to do several tasks that needs some kind od positioning.
May be that I have dodekahedron and I want to engrave number on each its side.
Yes, I can make 2 layers in lightburn one with pentagon a second with number. Pentagon could be engraved to wood and depicts excact position on both wood and screen. This is quite clumsy.
Another task is to engrave label like on the image attached. I have god an idea to paint metal with black color and waporise color by LASER.
It’s precis what it is. Framing is intended to make sure that the workpiece is within a given area, but it is not a design help tool.
If you want to make sure you engrave or cut exactly, use Abolute Coordinates and a Construction drawing that can be positioned precis on your machine bed in relation to Lightburn’s coordinate system and your drawing.
For your dodekahedron it is the easiest to make a template, but you have found that out for yourself.
I often use and like my camera system in Lightburn for this type of tasks with good results.
Push “Get Position” to force the update.
Create a jig where you can relocate the dodecahedron repeatably. Set your design with Absolute Coords so that you can always burn to the same location on the jig.
Alternatively, orient the pentagon shape so that one of the corners matches one of the 9-dot job origin points. For a pentagon this could be top, bottom, left, or right. Same with the hexagon in your earlier example. Then match job origin and use “Current Position” to align the work.
Traditional framing should work here without issue unless I’m missing something.
I hope that this is a bug of LightBurn, that should be fixed. This bug messed me up. I ask programmers to fix it:
thanks for help.
Test jig is depicted here. Engraving plastic is a challenge. It seems not to be so easy, I have expected. Anyway 3D printer can make text on top surface, sometimes on down and also on vertical surfaces. Making text on overhanging surfaces is pitifull.
Thankyou for your email. The ‘Get Position’ button actually queries the laser
and then adopts the reported work position. Turn on the ‘Show all’ button in the Console window,
then click on ‘Get Position’, to observe what happens under the hood. Some lasers have buttons
on a front panel from which you can jog the laser independently from LightBurn. If this happened
there would be no way for LightBurn to know the head position had moved without another query to the
GRBL controller at the laser. LightBurn could perhaps continually poll the controller for this
sort of info, but I believe that course of action might cause other performance issues. It may be
useful though to append a position query to the tail end of the framing code so the last known
position of the laser head is updated. I’ll query this with the development team. Cheers,
LightBurn Software Support
Blockquote
From my point of view all of this is not needed.
If you click to “frame” button you (LightBurn) exactly knows, where you want to shift
LASER head. There is no need to know anythig more. It is even no need to query position,
that slow down communication. You can only update head position cursor according to known
command sent.
Is it clear?
GetPosition works.
Sculpfun S30 has no jog buttons.
?
<Idle|MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000|FS:0,0|WCO:0.000,0.000,0.000>
ok
Starting stream
G00 G17 G40 G21 G54
G90
G0 X93Y174.488
G1 X161S0F6000
G1 Y232.512
G1 X93
G1 Y174.488
G90
Stream completed in 0:00
Head position cursor is displayed wrongly without clicking on GetPosition:
<Idle|MPos:93.000,174.488,0.000|FS:0,0|Ov:100,100,100>
ok
Commands:
G1 X93
G1 Y174.488
grant final position X=93; Y=174.488 without need to query.
This is an industry standard method of obtaining repeatability in the parts. CNC machines of all types use fixtures, rotary indexers, and jigs to put the part exactly where it needs to be. Using Absolute positioning, the generated Gcode motion commands expect it to be in the right location. In other words, you tell the machine where to perform a function, and you put the part where you tell the machine to go.
There is no shortcut to what you are trying to accomplish. I use this method to ensure I can go over the same part again and be within a fraction of a mm in the same path as before.
You keep mentioning Framing, but it has already been stated Framing is not intended for locating parts with precision.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.