What's up with dual laser user controls in Lightburn for use with an OMTECH laser with Ruida controller

[cebess (Charles Bess)]

I have a LightBurn design model that has a layer dedicated to the left side and a layer dedicated to the right side of the device.

You can see this design at:

two side test (do not change).lbrn2

Here is what it looks like in Lightburn:

I have layer 00 (BLACK) set to do laser 1 and that is on the right side of the laser.

I have layer 01 (BLUE) set to use laser 2 and those items are on the left side of the laser.

What is the purpose of the laser 1 and laser 2 radio buttons and the Enabled toggle (shown in the first picture)? Changing these radio buttons or the toggle will change the settings of the layers in the model (at least the layer that is highlighted - I think). I have had both lasers toggled on, so that it burns the laser 1 design on both sides of the board, with both lasers, ignoring laser 2’s design!?!? and other inexplicable behavior.

If I change the toggle or the buttons, it disturbs the settings of the layer selected (but only sometimes – I have yet to figure out when it changes the layers). Why are these radio buttons and not just check boxes covering a global desire for just laser 1 or laser 2? I am still not sure of the real purpose of having the Enabled toggle, although laser 2 will not fire if it is not enabled – I originally thought it was controlling of the radio buttons did anything, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Is there documentation on how these user interface controls are supposed to work?

[cebess (Charles Bess)]

I finally just disabled the 2nd laser, since the strange behavior of the controls and the fact that I had a single laser at home, made the use of both lasers problematic.

Maybe this changing the ‘front screen’ Enabled/Disabled toggle will be fixed so it doesn’t disturb the layers at some point in the future.

[JohnJohn (John Johnson)]

@cebess

What is the purpose of the laser 1 and laser 2 radio buttons and the Enabled toggle (shown in the first picture)?

Some Ruida controlled laser engravers have two tubes and two heads.
If you are attempting to send jobs to two engravers/controllers the workflow is different.

It shouldn’t have turned on accidentally. I have trouble imagining a hot-key shortcut to accidentally enable it.

Your profile info says Neje Master 2. That’s pretty far from where you appear to be. Please tell us more about the engraver or engravers you’re using.

I can’t replicate the dual laser behavior that you are seeing here.
Please check Device Settings and if enabled, disable the Laser 2 Controls for any single laser devices.

This may be worth review:

Dual Head Laser and not recognizing head 2 over ethernet connection

We recently purchased 2 dual head 100w laser engravers from China. As most things are from China, these lasers required a little bit of love and tinkering to get working correctly. After weeks of setup, we were ready to fire our first program. We used the direct USB plugin as our laptop that runs Lightburn was right next to it, and it worked flawlessly. Fast forward a few months, and a week or so ago we installed a new office in the warehouse and are now running the laser from the laptop using a…

[JohnJohn (John Johnson)]

@cebess

Is there documentation on how these user interface controls are supposed to work?

I went looking for the documentation for the dual headed laser and didn’t see it. I’ve put in a request with the documentation team for clarification. In the meantime, please do ask for assistance here. The community as a whole is very supportive and the feedback helps us make adjustments to the documentation and to the software.