Excessive Overscanning

Description¶

Red lines depicting traversal moves show the laser traveling a significant distance past the edges of graphics, or beyond the edge of the laser's work area, depicted as a green square/rectangle.

The red lines show Overscanning, additional moves added to the beginning and end of each line to give the laser space to speed up before firing, and slow down afterward, which in turn prevents the edges of engraved areas from burning darker than the centers.

Excessive Overscanning can lead to an unnecessary increase in overall job time, or out-of-bounds errors from your laser.

Solution¶

Error Messages

GCode-based lasers

If you enable Overscanning for a GCode-based laser and there isn't enough room at the edge of the job to accommodate the extra travel distance, you may see LightBurn's Cut may be out of bounds due to overscan settings error, or your laser's controller may return an ALARM:2 error.

DSP lasers

If a job on a DSP laser requires Overscanning and there isn't enough room at the edge of the job to accommodate it, your DSP controller may return the Not Enough Extend Space error.

Because Overscanning requires your laser to travel extra distance outside the exact boundaries of your graphics, if your graphics aren't positioned properly, or you are too close to the edge of your machine when using Current Position or User Origin as your Start From mode, you may accidentally command your laser to travel outside of its physical limits, once the Overscanning distance is included.

To correct excessive Overscanning:

Reduce Speed or Overscanning percentage (if you have a GCode-based laser).
Move your graphics in toward the center of your Workspace, if you are using Absolute Coordinates positioning.
If you are using Current Position or User Origin to set a custom Origin, set it closer to the center of your laser's work area.

See Overscanning for more information.

For more help using LightBurn, please visit our forum to talk with LightBurn staff and users, or email support.