How to adjust laser alignment on Creality Laser Falcon 10W

Lasers Solid State Lasers
1

Everything has been going well with my Creality Laser Falcon 10W. My projects advance in complexity. But I just encountered a problem when I tried to laser etch on the back side of my workpiece. It did not come out in register.

I’ve sometimes used my laser to mark out a shape on wood and then cut it out with the band saw. I can cut pieces out with the laser for wood up to about 3/8” thick. But when I tried cutting out the base for a flute stand in cedar 5/8” thick I seemed to exceed the limit.

So then I had a supposed brainwave. Why not just flip the piece of wood over and finish the burning from the back side?

it almost worked, except my back side cut was offset about 2mm on the Y axis. Then I started examining the alignment issue more closely. I am measuring my workpiece with a digital calliper and marking the center as precisely as possible. I’m trying to get the maximum usable space out of my wood but I leave a couple of mm to spare around the edges. I am using “current position” as my alignment position when starting out. I jog the laser head until it is exactly positioned on my workpiece centre. Sometimes this means jogging in fractional mm amounts. Then when I press start I can see the entire outline is offset towards one end (X left) by about 8mm which means one end of my cut line is off the end of my wood. So I compensate for this by using a bigger piece of wood. Everything goes well until I flip my workpiece over (top to bottom) and that second burning is exactly aligned side-to-side but is offset a couple of mm on the Y axis near/far.

Then the next time I jog the laser to the centre mark on my wood and then manually jog the laser head in the -Y direction by 0.65mm (trial and error) and do the same thing when I set my flip side position and it almost longs up properly. I’m sure I can eventually figure out a set if compensations to get it to work properly but it seems there must be some calibrations I can do to get the alignment set correctly to begin with and eliminate the compensations.

My attempts for find the calibrations have not found anything and searching for laser calibration on the Creality support site resulted in “0” topics.

I have done some projects where I cut a small piece out of a piece of wood, shaped the wood a bit in the Z axis and reinserted it in the hole in the wood and the second burning was exactly in register. So the repeatability of the laser position is very good. It is only when I try to burn on the flip side that things go wrong.

My workpiece is about 4”x12” and I align it on the bed against stops on the left and front. The bed is aligned to the laser frame by wood blocks screwed to the workbench.

The offset burning distance is consistent.

2

What software are you using?

3

LightBurn.

4

That software has a way to mark alignment pins for just that reason, ie so you can flip and cut from the back.

5

That sounds great. Can you give me a hint how to find that info? You called it “alignment pins”. What do you mean by that? Is it different from me marking an “X” at the centre of the workpiece and setting the laser there as my “current position“.

6

LightBurn doesn’t support Linux any more so I’ve not run it in a while. They have tons of videos and documentation so surely you can find how that software deals with turning over pieces.

But maybe I’m thinking of a feature which lets you work on larger pieces than your working area…

7

I’m sorry to hear they don’t support Linux any more since I have been considering moving in that direction. And it seems Linux is having a major upsurge lately. I’ve found that when it comes to searching it is important to use the precise right words. Without them searching doesn’t produce anything useful.

8

Looks like OMtech has a few videos for doing what you’d like. Using google to search these terms:
“lightburn laser engraving on both sides of wood”

9

Two other possibilities that I think would support your device:

10

As long as I still have a good working MacBook Pro I’ll continue using it for LightBurn.

11

Excellent, thank you! I’ll go check that out.

I have had a few experiences like searching all the Cubase help files looking for a common audio adjustment, I can’t remember what anymore. I looked for hours reading anything close and never found it. A couple of months later I was searching for something else and stumbled upon a side topic that looked interesting. Any there it was. They simply invented their own name for it instead of calling it what outer apps do and made it unfindable.