I’ve been digging in and creating my material library after winging it for quite awhile.
Problem I’m running into is: When I create a material it asks for thickness and categorizes materials accordingly; love it. Problem I’m having is that my machine has auto focus. So after it auto focuses on the material and the job starts, it raises the Z table the coorisponding material thickness. I know I can enter material with no thickness, but that would take away from the organization of the library. Is there a setting somewhere to stop the x adjustment, while leaving the thickness in the library? And, can someone explain if I should be setting my machine up a different way that would utilize this setting? Thanks!
Yes. If you disable Z then there will be no attempt to try to adjust height based on material thickness. But you should still be able to organize your material with thickness.
I assume your auto-focus is a hardware solution and doesn’t require interaction from LightBurn.
I’m running this for our makerspace user base. I decided to kill the auto-Z feature and just use a homemade focusing tool. You stand it on the material beside the head and raise Z until the angle cut in the side of the tool lines up with the cone’s angle. It’s just more intuitive, and less risky because the user must hold down the Z-motion button so you’re not going to accidentally drive it up and crush the work between honeycomb and head. It also is easier to be aware of warping probs in the stock by checking actual Z height across the stock.
With auto-z, if you don’t pay close attention to thickness in the layer setting, or if the homing is screwed up, it could pinch the work between head and honeycomb and cause damage- or, just have the wrong number and cut out of focus. We have a ULS machine without an air assist cone so it would be really hard to pinch anything, but having the wrong material height in the settings was an all too common case that kills the job.
The auto-z is nice and good in the hands of a skilled, careful user- but the dead Z and focusing tool is just easier and safer for general users.
