Laser position is off

Hey everyone, hopefully someone can help.

Bought my wife an AtomStack A5 PRO and we have used it for the last few days ok, but tonight the laser seems to be way off from where we want to laser a design on a Christmas tree shape.

I have turned on the machine at X0 Y0 every time, as I read that it takes it home position from there.
When I use the move to position command, it is spot on every time.

As soon as I hit play, its way off… see below


Can someone please help?

Based on what I can infer about your workflow it sounds like you’re saying you’re:

  1. cutting out the shape
  2. running the engraving
  3. using manual homing with the assumption that location on workspace is where it will burn on bed

If any of this is not accurate then please elaborate as it’s not obvious what the problem is that you’re having.

If so, make sure you’re set to “Absolute Coords” in the Start From mode in Laser window.

Having said that, is there a reason why you’re not engraving first and then cutting out in the same job?

If that’s not the issue, can you zoom out in LightBurn so the entire design is in view and take a full screenshot of LightBurn? A screenshot would be preferable over a photo.

Hi mate

These aren’t shapes we have cut, they are ready cut shapes we have bought. I took pics of each, converted them to PNG outlines and then engraved them onto the workbed which is in a set position, so I know that if I place the shapes in the outline on the workbed, they match up to the design on the screen.

I have attached the screen shot and the workbed to show you what I mean. I can do these because they don’t need to be as accurate, however surely it should be engraving mm perfect?


Okay. Thanks. Much clearer now.

If you are manually homing to front-left of your laser and using Absolute Coords then yes, this should be fairly repeatable. How far off is it? The engraving on the failed tree is unrecognizable so can’t tell what part of the engraving that is.

The relative repeatability of the homing will depend on each machine and manual homing tends to be slightly less repeatable than using homing switches. But you should be in the sub millimeter territory of repeatability.

Can you reliably get the machine to fail? If so, try confirming position after homing. You can push “Get position” in Move window to confirm that you’re at 0,0 at home location.

Also, does framing work properly?

What do you mean framing?

To give you an idea on the error I am dealing with, the red template to can see on the screen is exactly where the template is engraved on my base, however on the other pic, you can see how far down I have had to move the bells out of the engraved template, to catch the design correctly

If you push the frame buttons in Laser window, does the laser trace the appropriate location on the work piece?

Also, if you haven’t already, you can enable a laser light for framing by doing the following:

  1. In Device Settings enable “Enable laser fire button” and “Laser on when framing”
  2. In Move window set the Fire power to an appropriate level where you can see the light but it’s not damaging the material. Use the minimum power necessary and you should still be using goggles for this.

Hard to tell the scale of this but looks like 7 or 8 mm? That’s way more than you should need to expect… by an order of magnitude.

Is position off every time you use the laser? Wondering if it was possibly a one time issue when you made the base.

The other thing I’m noticing on the zoomed in shot is that the base engraving is very wobbly. That’s indicating some major mechanical tuning issues which could be contributing to your issues. Your engraving doesn’t show the same issues, though, so not sure what’s going on.

I’d suspect that the laser module is not well secured the gantry. Can you try wiggling/lifting the laser module. Is there excessive play between the module wheels and the gantry rails?

If so, there are eccentric nuts on the axes of the wheels that you can turn to close the distance between the wheels and railing.

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