Two lasers, one camera, easy peasy

Well, actually one laser and one plasma torch, but the point is there are two control points on the machine and LB designed their camera alignment UI to handle it very easily. This same solution is applicable to two laser heads and one camera also. In searching this forum for how this is accomplished, there are several threads without complete answers, except for this one- Two lasers one camera
And even that thread mentions the solution as being ‘theoretical’ and untested or verified.

So following advice from @berainlb and @tac12 , I eventually created 2 device profiles, one for laser and one for plasma. The process: Setup the laser first: calibrated the camera lens, then calibrated camera alignment, then saved the settings into the laser device. Now leaving the 4 circle alignment corners in place on the work bed (actually burned them into my mdf work bed), I then copied the laser device (export/import), renamed it ‘plasma’, (don’t forget to rehome when changing devices), mounted the plasma torch with a pointer in the nozzle, positioned the torch/nozzle/pointer over an easy to see circle center alignment corner, and used the ‘Camera Control’ window ‘X Shift’ and ‘Y Shift’ fields to position the circle center of the work area ‘Overlay’ on the current ‘laser position’ of the work area. Done. Save settings for the plasma device.

After some testing back and forth between laser and plasma torch, its all working repeatable and quite nifty. I’m going to like using a camera and the built-in features for it in LB to improve workflow of both cutting processes, it’s going to save enormous setup time which includes searching for that just right remnant piece to cut the next job. WOW. For anyone not yet using a camera for workflow improvement, it certainly seems to be worth the effort to setup.

Thanks again LB for a great feature, sorry it took me so long to give it a try.

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