Anyway, I have an ignorant question. I am wondering why most, if not all, of these laser designs use front left as the home position. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I have read lots and lots of posts, here and elsewhere, and I see a lot of folks talking about lower left, but then some go to upper right, and then tries to drive beyond here or there when the project is sent. I get that these are setup errors that can be corrected.
However, as an engineer, I understand the coordinate system, but I’m not sure why laser CNC designers are using lower left. If it were up to me, I’d use upper center. This is because I center my projects on the bed and this would be out of the way when working on the bed, and then the shortest distance when I send the project.
I’m just curious why one would put the mechanicals right in the way of where you’re trying to work, then you accidentally bump it, and have to do another full alignment before you can proceed, or at least you should do an alignment.
I have two lasermachines, one with home and the other without home limit switches. I know what you are saying and I persomally have got in the habbit of moving the laser head out of my way with the move buttonts i Lightburn. Once I’m ready to start an engrave I hit Home or return to origin and then press start. That way the laser will return to you strting position before starting an etching job. Works for me.
Good suggestion, it’s a pain, but can mean the difference between a good job and wasted material.
Having switched to LB, I saw that there are some macros. I haven’t explored them, but I’m thinking that may also offer an alternative. Combined with setting a ‘move to finish position’, could be an acceptable alternative.
I have also been studying the GRBL interface and see that there may be settings to actually work with “negative” workspace, but that’s more advanced than I’m ready for.
Although I have had a laser for over two years now I am still quite new to this hobby due to health and age (83) keeping me of the machine for long periods. Lightburn has so many settings and I struggle at times to get them all right for the job I’m attempting. There seems to be a lack of intructions to help probably as there are so many different machines and materials to laser. Trial and error seems to be how I have learnt most. Keeping a record of what you have done helps (when you are losing your memory) to get back to basic settings for each type of job. I wish there was a coarse I could go on to learn how to master this hobby. I remember my old Dad saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.”
This is one of many situations where we’ve almost shot ourselves in the foot by making it invisible to the user to move between many different systems like GCode and industrial DSP. Under the hood, these controllers speak completely different languages and operate differently.
“Because GCode.” It insists that the 0,0 coordinate location is at the lower left. Otherwise you get into negative coordinates which is a pain, and really shouldn’t be done, but of course, it is done by some.
Meanwhile, DSP controllers like the Ruida (and proprietary ones at that), that were designed with not a thought in the world about GCode, need the origin to be at the same location as where the homing sensors are located, which is usually the rear left or the rear right.
And again, this is all invisible to the our users, aside from a few minor “quirks” like having to pick the correct device origin.
Well crud, I get the obvious reality, I was just hoping I’d overlooked something more esoteric. When I worked in the fabrication area, I never really thought about it because I wasn’t an operator. Now I wonder if those guys had similar issues.
