Camera Alignment¶

Now that the camera is calibrated, you can move on to the next step, camera alignment. This process tells LightBurn where your camera is in relation to the workspace of your machine.

Before you start, make sure the camera is firmly mounted in the position it will be when using it. You can mount the camera to a movable piece of your laser, like the lid, as long as the position of the camera is the same when you use it as it is when you go through the alignment process.

Preparation¶

Make sure your camera is securely mounted and correctly positioned, as described above
Make sure you have a piece of material you can burn the calibration pattern onto. This should be at least 200 mm x 200 mm (roughly 8" square), but you may want larger materials for large lasers.
Focus your laser based on the material you're using.
In the "Tools" menu, choose "Calibrate Camera Alignment" to start the alignment wizard. Choose the same camera you did for the Lens Calibration wizard.
After verifying that you see an image from the camera, click "Next" to enter the alignment wizard.

Preview image from the camera — You should see something similar to this.

Cutting the Alignment Pattern¶

The rest of this process will be completed within the Camera Alignment Wizard. This tool uses your laser to cut a target pattern onto a piece of material, such as card stock, paper, cardboard, or thin wood and asks you to indicate the center of the targets.

Important Preparation

Before starting the alignment process, please make sure your camera is securely mounted in the position you'll be using it in.

Step 1¶

Place your material in the center of your workplace. The material thickness setting can be ignored if you don't usually use it.

Step 2¶

Enter appropriate speed and power settings to get a moderately dark mark without burning through. This will vary based on your laser and the material you're using, so we can't provide these for you.

On a large laser, it may help to scale the pattern up in this step to increase accuracy. Make sure you use large enough material. On a 900x600 mm laser, I used a little over 200% scale.

Step 3¶

Frame the pattern to make sure it's positioned on the material you're using.

Step 4¶

Run the cut. If it's not dark enough, you can adjust the settings and run it again. When the pattern is clearly visible and easy to see, click "Next".

Example of completed target pattern — Your target pattern should look like something like this

Warning

Don't move the target marker image after cutting it! The location within the laser is important to make sure the process works correctly.

If your camera is mounted to a moving part of the laser, such as the lid, make sure that before you begin capturing the target marker image, you have the camera in the same position it will be in when you're using it.

Capturing the Target Marker Image¶

From this screen, you'll capture the alignment image. Use the jog or "send to corner" buttonsto move the laser out of the view of the camera. When the camera has a clear view of all four targets, click the Capture button. You should see an undistorted version of the camera view appear in the right side of the window, with all four corner targets visible, as shown below:

Completed alignment capture — Camera alignment capture completed. The image should be clean and undistorted. If not, please use the lens calibration wizard to calibrate the camera.

Click "Next" when complete

Marking the Targets¶

On this page you 'tag' each of the targets by double-clicking in the center of each one in order. You can pan and zoom around the image using the same controls as the LightBurn edit and preview windows. When you double-click, a red '+' mark will appear. Place a marker in the center of each of the four targets, in the order they are numbered (1, 2, 3, 4). If you place one incorrectly, you can double click near it to shift it around, or click "Undo Last" to remove it and try again.

Place each marker as accurately as you can. Zooming in can help.

zooming in on target — Zooming in on the target

Here's an example of a correctly placed marker.

When you have placed all four markers in order, zoom back out and verify that all four are visible and clearly centered on the targets, like this:

all targets marked — Final placement of all four markers.

Click Next to finish the marker placement screen and click Finish to complete the process and store the results. You're done!

Now that everything is aligned, open the Camera Control window again, and click "Update Overlay" or use Alt+C to capture and project whatever happens to be in the camera view onto your workspace, as shown:

Click the "Fade" button to dim the background image, or the "Show" button to toggle it off and on.