Drawing position within LaserCAD

[lauckstreet]

I recently got my 80 watt laser up and running after a bit of frustration in the aligning of the mirrors (which I talked about in another thread on Lightobject's beam combiner). There's one thing I don't seem to be able to overcome when I use LaserCAD.

I was conducting a simple cutting test. I had a 1/4" x 3" x 24" billet of wood on my honeycomb and was trying to cut out a 30mm x 10mm rectangle. When I first started the test during alignment of my mirrors, the position of the drawing was at the front left hand corner of the cutting area. After repeated tests, I wanted to move the rectangle on the x axis to a new position. I did this in the drawing and it clearly shows it is at a different position that it was originally. However, when I uploaded it to the controller and ran the test again, it still kept cutting in the original position. Even though it showed the rectangle was now at x=400, the cut kept coming out at x = 10.

I could not get the rectangle to be cut out at the new location of x = 400. I don't know what I'm missing or why? Can anyone explain this to me? Do i need to upload the drawing to a new filename on the controller. I haven't tried that yet but that's the only explanation I can come up with. Is there a setting I'm missing?

Thanks,

Bob

[Tech_Marco]

Bob,

When you moved the laser head to a new location, press "Origin" on the LCD unit and the laser head will start from that position. But to do that, you must set the "Key" as Origin postion when setting up the Origin Mode using the LCD control unit

You have 3 different modes to select the Origin:
1) Machine zero (physical 0,0)
2) Key origin (wherever the position you moved with key and press Origin)
3) Software (it depends on your graphic showing on the LaserCad)

Everytime you made change, you need to press "Reset" to take it in effect


Marco

[lauckstreet]

I've got my machine set up as Machine Zero so it homes on startup to the home switches. I'd prefer to keep it that way. So there's no way to have a drawing positioned somewhere other than 0,0 and have the machine cut that drawing out at the position it is drawn in LaserCAD? Because that's how I'd like it to work. I draw something, position it somewhere on a piece of wood other than 0,0 and cut it out. I might just need to cut one part out and don't want to waste an entire billet. Next time I cut the part on that same billet of wood, I might want to position a different part on the billet so in my drawing I would locate the part at an x,y coordinate where I haven't cut any parts on the billet and have the cut start at that specific location. So you're saying there's no way to do that, I have to physically reposition the laser had and change origin to key rather than machine zero?

Thanks,

Bob

[Tech_Marco]

Origin mode: "Software " seems good you

Try all 3 modes and find one s suitable for you.

Marco

[lauckstreet]

Yeah, I haven't tried software yet. I'll give that a try.

Thanks,

Bob