Hello.
I am new in the forum and laser “World”, but not at the CNC as I have been playing as a hobby with CNC machines for a decade or so.
I got my self a Chinese 500x700 60W laser with the intend to modify it to my needs. On of the things I did was to change the whole table lifting system to a more steady and solid one and add a stepper to take advantage of the Z axis functionality. I also installed an auto focus touch probe to it.
Trying to setup the functionality in LightBurn though was the hard part , because either I was not able to auto focus (Home) the axis or I was not able to make Z not to home at start up.
After struggling for a while with no success, I decided to give a try to RDWorks to see the settings on that side. I was kind of disappointed to find out that I was able to make the Z axis to work properly from within RDWorks and not LightBurn.
Here is why. In RDWorks I see these settings:
Where you have the option to Enable Z (Vendor tools window) and then at the user settings tell the controller not to home Z at startup (Right side panel).
In LightBurn on the other hand, I have this settings read from the machine which does not make any sense, and I could not find the appropriate settings to enable Z but not home at startup.
The machine is working properly now of course, but I never change the settings from LightBurn because when I write from LightBurn it changes the Z axis settings and I have to reset them from RDWorks.
Am I missing something, or is this a bug (maybe at the OSX version)?
My understanding is that device settings are not controller relevant and do not change any parameters at the controller side. So the “Enable Z” at the device settings is only to let LigthBurn know that you have live Z axis. Somehow though, you have to let the controller to know that Z axis can be homed by selecting the AutoFocus functionality and that this functionality should not be executed at StartUp.
I played with all the settings in LightBurn, before I do it in RDWorks, but I was not able to make Z axis to make use of the AutoFocus function, although I was able to move the table Up and Down from the control panel.
The only combination of settings (to write to the controller) that worked for me was the one I am showing at the screen shot (Enable Home for Z checked and Auto home z unchecked)
What this setting does, is make Z axis home at start up, and it is not what I want.
There are 2 separate parameters in the controller that define the behavior of an axis.
One that says that the axis can be homed, and one that says if the axis will be homed at start up or not.
In LightBurn machine settings there is only one setting, the one that defines the homing at startup.
So if it happens that the second parameter that defines if the axis can be homed, is false, then the parameter “Enable Homing” in LightBurn has no effect at all.
, because either I was not able to auto focus (Home) the axis or I was not able to make Z not to home at start up.
