Multiple I/O Triggers In A Program

LightBurn Software Questions
1

We paired a UR Cobot with our 50W MOPA laser to automate as much work as possible. In most cases, the Cobot holds the part for a single marking. But sometimes we need to mark the part on multiple surfaces. Think of a tumbler that needs marking on both sides. We use the Cobot to mark, rotate, mark.

In ezCAD2 we are able to:

  1. Wait for an I/O signal from the cobot to start marking.
  2. Mark the part in one area.
  3. Send an I/O signal to move the part to a new position.
  4. Wait for an I/O signal from the cobot to start marking.
  5. Mark the part in another area.
  6. Send an I/O signal to move the finished part to the bin.
  7. Repeat.

Are we able to duplicate this workflow in LightBurn?

2

Hi Tyler,

Sounds cool! Would love to see that in action!

Is the second marking a repeat of the first?

That workflow should still work fine, using the “Start Marking” IO signal for (1,2) and (4,5)

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The ‘Done Marking’ signal could trigger (3) and (6)

And you may have to disable “Require Framing..”;

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You can test this using our fully functional trial.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply! We are evaluating the trial software now. Everything is better than ezCAD2, I just wanted to verify this workflow.

The markings are different. Think of a logo on one side of the tumbler and a name on the other.

Here is an extreme example of the workflow (not our video).

Is it accurate that LightBurn can not send or receive I/O signals in between Cuts/Layers? It’s not the end of the world if we need to program these types of jobs in antiquated software.

4

LightBurn does monitor I/O during a job - otherwise features like Door Protect and Stop Marking wouldn’t work.

However, compared to EzCad2, you won’t have the same options to send or respond to user-defined I/O events during a job or between layers.

So for different markings, each marking would require a separate LightBurn project file.

You may not need to use physical I/O triggers at all. Instead, you could run a program on the PC that listens for network messages from the UR Cobot, tells LightBurn to load and start a specific job, and send a message back to the UR when the job is complete (when the laser is idle). This can be done using LightBurn’s UDP commands.

Switching between jobs only takes a split second, for example (using C:\Program Files\LightBurn\SendUDP.exe);

SendUDP "C:\Jobs\first job.lbrn2"
SendUDP "C:\Jobs\second job.lbrn2"
5

Great info. Thank you.