Hi, after seeing your video on how to cut objects larger than your laser bed I got inspired and I am now trying to engrave a large piece of wood to create the lines for a crokinole game. I have the work divided up into four “squares” so in the end it will be four different engravings. However, after the first engraving and I want to line up the second one, it get misaligned by probably 2 cm or more.
As an example I start by setting up the print and cut wizard with the first and second targets (using the lightburn move controllers). Then when I use the move laser “arrow” to double check if the alignment is correct (by clicking on one of the targets) it moves to a position that is about 2 cms off.
Am I misunderstanding how this feature is supposed to work?
If I understand correctly, you are defining the targets on your workpiece using the move arrows, then after that process you are using the position pin to click on the target on your screen and the laser head moves.
That is not proper workflow. After you have your targets defined, Lightburn does some behind the scenes calculations to adjust your design to fit the defined space, it does not make the adjustments on screen, so clicking on the design mocves the laser to whatever position it is in on your screen, not the adjusted position.
Set your targets, the first one should be highlighted and the second one blue. You should see a “print and cut ready” (or similar, I don’t recall the exact verbiage) message in your Laser window. Frame the job to see if it appears correct, and if so run it.
Ok thanks, so the move arrow will not be calibrated then, it’s happening behind the scenes. Good to know.
However, I did those steps you describe and both the framing and the finished engraving is still off by a rather large amount. I just thought I would explain it with the move laser arrow as It seemed the misalignment was about the same.
I’m using the laser “fire” to set my target so there shouldn’t be an offset.
On your second question, I started by engraving two targets but after watching a tutorial I realised they were a little too close and that it was possible to use a point from the actual engraving. So I guess my answer is that I’ve tried both with no luck.
By making four squares and breaking the engraving apart i suppose. In one of the tutorials I watched he separated them into separate files so I did that too. Not sure why though to be honest
Absolutely I will upload my files. They are separated into 4 different files to illustrate how I plan on engraving. In part 1 I added the full engraving for illustration.
Thanks a lot for taking your time to help, appreciate it.
You may yet still have a workflow issue but I see an immediate issue in your design.
Your alignment targets are very close together. This will have the affect that any small misalignment will be magnified as it’s scaled for the entire design. Try positioning the targets such that they are as far apart as possible between designs. Also, note that not all 4 designs need share the same set of alignment targets. You can have multiple alignment targets.
Also note that you need not actually burn the alignment target to the workpiece if you have natural positions on your design on which to target. In your case, the ends of the arcs are natural position markers. Perhaps one center target and one placed on the end of the ends of the largest arcs would work.
Try this. I split your file differently. so that you have good target positions farther apart. I included some instructions. You may want to disable the blue layer and create a small center point for your center target, then after all 4 quadrants are finished enable the blue and burn it only. Crokinole redesign.lbrn2 (384.1 KB)
I tried it this morning and it worked great! I think the problem was having the targets too close but most likely there were some issues with my work flow too. Having a clear design obviously helps
Thank you both for your help. What a great community and program this is.
I’m glad it worked for you, and yes I agree that your targets were too close, which is why I changed it the way I did. It was easier for me to make the changes to the file than to try and explain to you what I was thinking.
I was happy to help you with this. Exercises like this are as much for my own knowledge as they are for others.
BTW, Crokinole is a game that I haven’t heard of since I was a child. My parents would occasionally play it, but I have never played it outside of there.
