Lens Calibration in Lightburn

Galvo lenses distort. The factory cor file fixes most of it; the wizard in Lightburn fine-tunes the rest. Run it once per lens, save it, forget it, until you swap lenses.

Lens Correction Wizard

1. Mount a flat sheet of anodized aluminum or marking-prepped steel, bigger than the field.
2. Lightburn → Tools → Calibrate Galvo Lens. Follow the on-screen wizard.
3. It engraves a grid. You measure each square and enter the dimensions; Lightburn computes the correction.
4. Save the result with a clear name like fiber-150mm-2026-04.cor.

Alignment Wizard

Run this if shapes drift off-axis or the red dot doesn't match the actual mark position. It walks you through firing test marks and aligning the red-dot pointer to them.

Scale calibration (per lens)

After the grid wizard, verify absolute scale: burn a 40mm circle, caliper the actual X and Y, and enter requested-vs-measured in Device Settings. Re-burn and re-verify. When measuring the wizard grid or the circle, caliper exactly, never round, the correction math amplifies sloppy measurements.

The 2-minute scale recal

Mid-production sanity check when dimensions look suspicious (or after any software update). No 9-point grid needed:

1. Lay a business card on top of the part already fixtured (keeps focus height, protects the part).
2. Burn a 35mm circle on the card.
3. Caliper the circle center-to-center in X and Y.
4. Correct the scale % in Device Settings from requested vs measured. Done in about two minutes.

How often?

• After every lens swap.
• After every Lightburn update (quick 35mm-circle check at minimum).
• If the machine is moved, jolted, or shipped.
• Anytime parts are coming out warped or off-position.