Hi everyone I have a gantry laser setup that I run on my big kitchen stove because I have a large exhaust vent above, I just changed my laser and control board to a J-Tec 7+ watt laser and power supply and control board. My issue is that when I get done burning a project I unplug everything to put it away and the next time I start a job I have to set the machine origin again or it will crash. my question is does unplugging the machine make it loose it’s origin? I know most people don’t unplug their machine after they are done. I am using lightburn software.
It does, yes - The machine should have homing switches, so if you home it that gets the origin back again.
Thanks Oz, that’s what I thought. I use my machine on my stove because it is easy to do and vents very well until I make a more devoted space to work. Setting the origin in the corner when I start machine back up is no big deal because I have no homing switches. If I were to put in homing switches which I could, would I then just set up the machine so it homes in on start up in lightburn? What I do now is go to X 0 Y 0 where I have an x in lower left corner and from there I know the distance to center of my work space where I start my projects from. When I get done I tell it to go to origin so it’s out of the way check my piece and then I can tell it to go back to job origin in middle of work space where I started.
Thanks again for your help
POP
You can set it to auto-home when LightBurn connects, or just click the Home button manually - they do the same thing.
Hi Oz, Pop, again In reply to your answer I would tell it to auto home after I put limit switches on machine right. I have another question before getting lightburn I was using T-2 Laser with my gantry setup before upgrade and everything was in mm. Lightburn lets me use inches or thousands which I use every day as I am a tool and die maker. Is there a way I can make a new burn chart for burning in inches per min. and % of laser power. If I used to used 1600mm speed and full power 3000mW laser before now I am using 80% of 7watt laser and 62.9 inches to get same burn value. I have been multiplying mm speed by 25.4 to convert to inches and adjust % of burn by trial and error.
Big thanks for your help with beginners like me.
best software ever
POP
If you already know all your speeds in mm/min, it would probably be easier to just leave them that way:
Thanks so much I didn’t know that setting meant that just went right to inches / min. That’s what learning is about. This software is just so amazing. Now all I will have to do is adjust for % of laser burn because the other one was 3000mW this new one is 7+ watts so i’m thinking all I have to do is cut burn down by 2/3 to get same look of previous image. I am beginning to use this software to do my design work also.
Thanks POP
Just spoke to Jay at J-Tec Lasers and he said he is going to hook me up with a set of micro switches no problem.
POP
Hi OZ, I sent you picture of the design I burned yesterday and was wondering why lightburn sees the border as an image file and will not let me flood fill burn it even though it is a vector image. It took me 2 hours to do border and 10 min. to flood fill all the letters. I made the program using 3 separate layers so I could make the burn speed and % of burn all different. This is my program, (Dragon fly) , speed (100) burn % 80, image 45degree threshold (2) passes.( Letters), speed (100) burn % 80, fill, angle (0) 1 pass. (Border), speed (100), burn % 80,image 0 degree Jarvis. All images were jpgs converted in Inkscape to vector files before making program in Lightburn. Everything burned very well just took a long time. Any help would be great. Can you also let me know how to set-up preview to be more accurate. I read up on it but don’t understand what to change or if it is even worthwhile. By the way the last update that makes laser stay on for positioning to a spot under low power is great.
Many thanks for all your help
POP
If the border is set to Jarvis, it’s an image, not vectors. You would need to use the Trace Image feature to convert it to actual vector shapes.
You said you used InkScape to convert to vectors, but if you load an image into InkScape and save it as an SVG it just embeds the image into the SVG file as it was. You actually have to use the Trace Bitmap tool in InkScape (or LightBurn) to convert it to shapes so you can use the flood fill setting.
Good morning Oz, will have to try it again because tracing to bitmap is what I did and saved it as svg. When I bring it into lightburn it sees it as image and does not give me the option to flood fill. I will try it again and let you know.
Pop
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