Not sure what it’s for but I see the one pause at the start of the job:
G4 P1
I don’t see any other explicit pauses.
If I’m doing my math correctly it would seem the circumference in the g-code is 327.404 mm (29.764mm * 11 iterations). I’m not familiar with A-axis operations or rotaries much in general though so not sure if there’s more nuance to this.
When you see the pauses does it correlate to the 11 relative move operations in one direction and then 11 again in the opposite direction? That could be the source of the pauses but unclear why that would cause a delay. So 22 total pauses in the whole job?
If you are using a chuck type rotary, the software needs the circumference to compute ‘surface’ speed. As it will change as the diameter changes.
Not so a roller/wheeled rotary, the drive wheel is what rotates the object and it’s surface speed is know by the step/rev, the gear ratio and the drive wheel size. There is no need for a diameter. No matter what the diameter, the drive wheel moves a known amount.
When I looked at your screen shot of the out of bounds…
If the position displayed at the top is the ‘current position’, 280x130, then trying to move it 135mm further would that put it ‘out of bounds’?
Just think of it as your Y axes, would that go out of bounds?
I don’t know what it takes to change from rotary to Y table. If you can generate the error then switch back to standard mode, I’d bet the error is still there…
@berainlb there are indeed 11 pauses in each direction! Just as there are 11 entries in the g-code in each direction… the question now is, why are there 11 entries for each direction instead of one?
I know zero about g-code and have not been looking at it up until now, so I don’t know if that is the way it’s supposed to be. It seems logical that those 11 entries up and down, are the reason for the pauses in my drive motor.
These are correlated then but not necessarily the cause per se. The commands should be fine but it’s odd that your laser is pausing due to them.
In reality, though, I assume you’d be running scanning operations, though, not operations that roll the object back and forth. So maybe this isn’t an issue in practice?
Hi jack, you are correct about current position’, 280x130 and what you say makes sense.
I think I may be confused about a few things here.
The first thing is, if I tell the LightBurn Rotary Setup I am using the A axis, shouldn’t LightBurn ignore the Y position?
The reason I wonder about this is that, to set my rotary, physically in a usable position in the bed of my K40 mini, it winds up being a bit above dead center in the Y’s usable area… if that makes sense.
So when I position my laser head over where it needs to be on the glass to start the engrave, Y winds up being about 130, when in reality that is my origin of my rectangle, where the glass will start spinning to execute my design which will most likely be larger than what LightBurn thinks I have left in my Y travel since it thinks I am starting at Y 130.
That is mostly the case, but what if I wanted a line or rectangle underneath a design or text on my glass, I am fairly certain that unwanted results would happen with the laser staying on at power while the motor is pausing at intervals during the engrave of that line or rectangle.
My assumption was that you’d burn an entire line at a time including line or rectangle underneath the design. Basically like a raster across the entire distance. This way you wouldn’t be dealing with any issue with rotational pauses.
I really depends on how your hardware is built. Can you leave the rotary plugged in and use the Y axes normally?
My setup, after the controller boots, I unplug the Y axis and plug the rotary in there. So the Ruida doesn’t know… As far as I know the only manipulation is computation of the motor steps to get the job done.
This is how I engrave a cup/mug…
The left side will be the ‘base/bottom’ of where I want the image. Center allows me to put the handle straight down for an image opposite the handle. Don’t let the photo fool you, it was taken before I fixed it and is ‘flipped’… need to get out and take another photo…
‘Start from’ set to User Origin
‘Origin’ set to center left.
A mug with a logo, the ‘origin’ is right above the center of the logo…
I rotate the Y axes (A axes, in your case) to the center of it’s range. Set the ‘Origin’, this is the ‘User Origin’ that the machine will use.
Now that the rotary is ‘centered’ I put the cup/mug in and orientate the cup/mug, not the rotary, it to where I want the center bottom.
My image can go +/- from that position.
Framing should work properly.
You will forget to set the Origin… we all do…
Does you controller allow you to use both the Y and A axes at the same time? Do you ‘hand’ set the Y axes or does you controller allow you to do it while the rotary is in the machine?
The way my machine works, I put it where ever it’s most convenient to use.
The only thing you need watch is that there is enough room for overscan in the X direction.
Vectors are tough with these and I have a configuration file that I load when I use the rotary, above that which Lightburn does. All of the ‘rotational’ speeds and accelerations are slowed, sometimes to single digits. Mine are in mm/s.
I generally just convert them to a bitmap and scan them for a quicker run. This really slows the problems axis, which is the rotational issue.
There are a lot of things I don’t know about your controller/hardware, so keep that in mind. I’m sure any blunders will be pounced on…
This is my PiBurn. It’s oriented backwards in the picture. I have since swapped the field windings and it sits with the motor on the right.
You are exactly right! I hadn’t thought about it like that… it’s great to have another set of eyes looking at the problem. Here is a picture of my first glass (line included) :
Although I am not quite happy with the results yet, I am sure this is just going to require a bit of fine tuning.
The bottom line is, it seems like the rotary is working!
Thank you so much for working through this puzzle with me @berainlb !!!
With the Cohesion 3D LaserBoard there is a dedicated “A” connection, so in this case there is no need to unplug it, just disable the rotary in LightBurn and then return to Absolute Coords. I will mostly unplug it anyway, to free up the bed for my lab jack and honeycomb “Z” platform when I’m engraving on flat materials.
I am able to use the “Y” movements within LightBurn while I have the “A” axis enabled. There is no convenient way that I have found so far, to control rotation of “A” to rotate the glass from within LightBurn, if that’s what you mean.
What I have been doing, is to create and use a saved position from within the move panel to get me close to where I want it to be and then I manually move the glass for my exact position under my led pointer.
This is Extremely helpful information Jack, I will try out your methods… I truly appreciate your shared insights and humor!
Those warning are there for a reason and I’d try and work out why you are getting them
On my machine, when I get that and send it, it cuts my ‘engraving’ off at the ‘working area line’.
Lightburn software is pretty smart, so I’d continue with troubleshooting that issue. We know Lightburn works, so something in the configuration is off somehow/where…
I’m late to the conversation and didn’t read every word in each post but something to consider is the overscan when doing raster ops. The head of the laser has inertia and you have to account for that when locating your material. LightBurn throws an out of bounds error if the overscan moves the head outside of the machine limits to prevent the head from crashing. Don’t know if this somehow plays into the error you are seeing.
Thanks for the input Tim, I am using an over-scan of 1.5mm… I’ll test to see if I get the warning without it, although I’ll probably still need to use the over-scan.
I have a problem with the “Out of bounds” message as well, If trying to laser a line around a tumbler, that line is longer than the bed configuration (on my K40). So, the message made sense if it was not on a rotary - however unless I switch to "Start from Current position ", there is no way to ignore the warning and get any output. I consider this a bug, not a feature
There is no difference in a rotary and a Y table, they are handled the same way. Hence the same types of error messages.
The controller handles the rotation by counting steps. If they are allowed to ‘roll’ over, it’s position is essentially ‘lost’, so the limits exist, even on a round object.
What is your standard mode of ‘Start From’, Absolute Coordinates or User Origin?
If you position your rotary axis first, you may not encounter the error.
The other option is a separate configuration with the Y enlarged… or homing disabled on that axes if possible with your controller, may allow extended rotation. But there may still be a limit.
I have a complete separate configuration for my rotary, actually a few, at least one for vector and one for scanning.
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