Hi All,
I just setup my Longmill and surfaced the spoil board. Now I am trying to setup a project with the laser. My assumption is I can use the laser to create a cross at a point and then use workspaces to offset from the router probed XY and the laser so I do not have to continually try and find laser zero. If that makes any sense can someone guide me on how to use the workspaces and set this up or an alternate easier method to achieve the same thing?
Thanks in Advance
Phil
Not sure if you’re aware but gSender has a laser offset to help with aligning the laser zero to where the router zero was and vice versa.
I was just posting about it here. Not sure if that helps. Some people here use macro’s to go back and forth between laser and router.
Your workspaces solution will probably work but will limit you to that one place for zero if I am understanding correctly. As far as how they work you can change between workspaces in the top right area of gSender. Any zero that is set in a workspace will stay set until you set it to somewhere else. They are saved in EEPROM and persist through power off etc.
For example I have saved my router position at the center of my machine to the last workspace. I can turn on the machine, home, switch to that workspace and hit Goto XY and my machine is in the center. I can then switch to any other workspace and Hit zero all to copy the position. With some peg holes drilled from that center position I can do double sided work. I never work in that last workspace I just use it to store center.
All that said it would probably be easier if I just took the time to learn some macros for gSender.
However you achieve it, I think it’s beneficial to be able to get to the same spot repeatedly.
I use the Workspaces (with saved XY zero) to work on a second project while my first project is sitting in the first Workspace waiting for ??? There’s really no reason to do anything else for Workspace XY zeroes, because gSender preserves those values in EEPROM. I do have a macro that I perform, to hard code the XY zeros for all my Workspaces, I’m sure that I don’t really need to do that. Its just a sanity thing; belts and suspenders. (gSender early versions did not preserve the Workspace stuff.)
My laser offset is built into my post processor from my Vectric software “save” function. (Thanks to Gary!) I haven’t use the gSender laser offset feature, but I’m sure it will work fine. @_Michael has explained the important stuff in both of his posts.
In addition, I used the laser on my spoilboard to mark the XY axis and the zero point with graphics and labels to help me remember and find the additional Workspaces that I’ve defined.
I’ve found marking my spoil board with the laser to be helpful. I have a grid with 50mm spacing on mine. It really helps to line things up square. I learned a trick on here about not wrecking your spoil board, video here, that has really helped my laser marks on the spoil board to last.
After watching that video I always either set zero to the spoil board, with Machine Bed checked in Vectric, or put the bit just touching the spoil board and manually enter “- stock thickness” for Z with Material Surface checked.
So how would you proceed to laser mark a grid pattern on a T-Track spoilboard. Would you have to start and stop the laser at every T. Meaning you would have to design it as such?
You could do that, but you don’t need to use a lot of laser power to just mark the board. It won’t hurt aluminum at low power.
Like only 20%?? power at maybe 70% speed
I just ran right over the T-Tracks, it wasn’t a problem. The T-Tracks are a bit lower so not as focused and the laser doesn’t have that much power. I have a SainSmart laser not the Sienci one but I’m guessing the Sienci one won’t hurt the aluminum.
I made a mount with my 3d printer so I could put the laser in the router mount so that for that burn my laser could reach everywhere that my router can.
There are some pics of my Frankenstein router setup that day over here! Since then I have cut the cord on my router and put in connectors so I can take my router on and off easily. Repurposed an old cord so I can now use the router off the machine if I need to.
Just posting to make it clear that I have inductive sensors for homing and some of what I’ve said here only works well if you have the sensors or switches.
This worked perfectly and I’m all setup. Just need to design the grid pattern in lightburn and I’m flying. Thanks for all the information and help getting started
You are most welcome sir!