I thought I would give the Print & Cut function a try since my wife through something at me that would be a good candidate. I don’t know what I am doing wrong, but for the life of me, I can’t get the Set First Target to not be gray’d out. I am connected via ethernet (Ruida Controller) through a switch and I can verify that the software is communicating with the controller. I have verified that LightBurn is set for absolute controls etc. Does the controller have to be connected via USB for this to work?
OK, so you have to select the Image object in order for the Set 1st/2nd Target Position options to become available.
This is worth a review if you haven’t already. https://github.com/LightBurnSoftware/Documentation/blob/master/PrintAndCut.md#print-and-cut-with-lightburn
“The image object”? You have to create targets in your design to align with, and they have to each be a single object (like a pair of lines that is grouped, or a single circle or box). You select one of the targets, jog the laser to it, etc… following along with the directions Rick posted above.
I think I worded that a little badly - and I was wrong that it had to be an “image” vs. “line” or “fill”. In any event, unless an object is selected - some object, I guess it doesn’t matter what type - the Set 1st/2nd Target Position options are grayed out. I guess that may seem obvious to some, but it wasn’t clear (at least to me).
The docs lay it out pretty clearly, but what you’re doing is selecting an object in LightBurn, and setting the position of your laser to match the position of that object. You do that twice to give the software two points of reference between your design and the real item and it can figure out the offset, orientation, and scale required to make them match.
Have you thought about adding a 3rd point for aligning? I know with my other wide format printers and cutters, 3 plus alignment points produces a way more accurate result.
It would be considerably different (and much more complicated) math. With two points, I’m correcting orientation, scale, and position, but globally for the entire job. 3 points would add skew, and more than that and you start talking about local influence and adjustment for warpage over a really large job. That would be important for things like fabrics that have localized stretch, but anything semi-rigid, like paper, or fully rigid wouldn’t likely gain much from it.
I might try that eventually, but that’s a lot of effort for the relative few who’d ever make use of it. At our price point, I need to be careful to focus on bang for buck, or we’ll have to start charging an awful lot more bucks.
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