OMG! It’s working!
Turns out it was something SUPER dumb, and I have to admit that I resorted to using ChatGPT to figure it out.
The solution was to turn off the Red Dot Always On switch.
Apparently, if you keep it on, it always acts like it’s framing, and never activates the laser to do an actual engraving.
I literally tried every other switch!
Thanks so much for helping me out with this!
Your suggestions and guidance got me 99% of the way there, and I’m very grateful!
-Thomas
wow! What a ride!
Thanks for sharing this peculiar solution.
I’m setting a reminder to thoroughly analyze what we can learn from this!
One interesting side-effect is that now that I have the red-dot (really violet) turned off, it doesn’t show the violet dot by default so it’s hard to get the focal length. (I usually do this by making the external fixed red dot align with the internal violet dot). I guess I’ll have to turn it on when focusing and then turn it back off when I’m engraving. Slightly annoying but still 100000000% better than using SeaCAD!
Does your machine actually have a red assist laser which goes trough the lens?
It would require a separate red laser diode with a beam combiner between the galvo head and laser source.
This section of our Galvo Red Dot Alignment video shows this part:
Not every UV source has this, but they are framing with the UV source instead.
It would require a very complex coating of a crystal prism, which:
The “red dot” appearing purple suggests that it doesn’t have an extra red dot.
Although importing the LmcPar.cfg file you sent earlier did populate the “Port 0” for “Red Dot control”!
This aligns with your screenshot of the SeaCad parameters.
Can you frame a job in SeaCad and let us know what happens?
Hi Aaron!
There is an external actual red dot laser that is mounted on the bottom of the laser. It is plugged into a power source and I’m guessing it uses the red dot port to turn that on and off. This laser does not move, so isn’t used for framing. It is only used for focusing. My fiber laser is the same (from the same company)
The framing laser is indeed violet in both SeaCAD and Lightburn.
Pic included of bottom of laser. UV laser on left, Fiber on right. Both red dot focus lasers are circled.
-Thomas
Actually. Now that I think about it. The fiber laser does frame in red. But it doesn’t use the external red dot to do it. It may have a beam combiner like you outline above. I haven’t opened it to check.
But the UV frames in violet.
-Thomas
Thanks for the pictures.
the two circled assist lasers are only used for focusing the beam.
You would move the Z-Axis until the red dot and the pointer through the lens converge.
Ideally, that’s where the focus is, but this depends on the mounting angle of those assist lasers!
I recommend focusing by eye and ear first (move the z-axis during a job until the effect on the material is the strongest)
Then check if that’s also where the two dots are aligned.
If not, loosen the bracket of the red dot laser and align the dots.
