$58 laser looking good and cool

The Lightburn license is only valid for updates/upgrades until it expires. You can continue to run the one you are already using, but if it’s expired, you cannot update to a more current version…
You have to renew your subscription…

Should do it a couple months prior and you get extra ‘time’…

I assume that’s it…?


I don’t know how you ‘install’ on your Ubuntu box… I have my lightburn folder in my root directory “/home/jack/LightBurn” with the proper desktop file an upgrade is relatively simple.

  1. rename the original LightBurn directory to something else - for a backup. I just append ‘-x’ to the name…
  2. Click to open the .7z file and navigate to the directory above where you want it, in my case it’s /home/, highlight ‘your home’ and extract.

Just click your Lightburn icon and you should be in like flint…

:smile_cat:

I’m not talking about Light Burn. I have Linux Ubuntu 9 year old version. I downloaded the latest update to it. But I can’t get it to install. Every time it gets half way through, it crashes. If I can get to update, it should have problem with light burn. I hope !!

When did you last update it?

Sometimes it doesn’t work too well if you miss a bunch of updates… at least IMHO…

Might have to either find out how to upgrade it gradually or worst case a backup of your data and re load it… I cringe at that though…

Might try googling it…

:smile_cat:

Update it a little at a time, oh boy! I remember when I got the update about a year ago, I lost count of the number of updates they had over the last 9 years. I think my ubuntu starts out as version 0. something. LOL

jack@Kilo:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal
jack@Kilo:~$

:smile_cat:

Yes I Did! Thank you.

See this thread: [DLC32 M4 does not work]

That was my problem… M4 would crash it. I flashed with the firmware that was given but didnt fix my problem. Trying to flash back the flash program could no longer sync with the board. Being short on patience I figured it’s time to give FluidNC a shot. That loaded easy enough and communicates fine with LightBurn. I’m running the board here on my desk with nothing connected, homing disabled, watching the lights flash as it cruises thru a job. I’ll get it hooked up to a ‘real machine’ tomorrow.

Hope you have better luck. I’m not disappointed with my board, I think it will do fine with FluidNC. Yet another adventure!

Would a terminal talk to the board with the original firmware?


I can get a grbl board for about $30 bucks… from amazon. The only real drawback I know of is the pwm is only 8 bits. I can get along with that…

This looks much like a couple of them I use…

I have a couple of Woodpecker control board that has it’s limit switches marked X, Y and Z but in reality it turned out to be Z, Y and X… Right to left… That stumped me for a while…

:smile_cat:

Really as far as commercial hobbyist boards are concerned the MKS DLC32 is really one of the best options. I suspect the issuse @papa.zed saw was something specific to his setup. There are plenty of others here running that board without issue on both diode and co2 lasers.

While I’m sure this will work I’m not sure it will scratch the tinkering itch you’re after. These are going to be very similar boards to what you already have.

Have you considering supporting some of the more interesting homebrew boards? Perhaps something built on Raspberry Pi Pico or Teensy controllers?

grblHAL BoB Unkit for Teensy 4.1. - T41U5XBB from Brookwood Design on Tindie

PicoCNC - a grblHAL breakout board. · Discussion #3 · grblHAL/RP2040 · GitHub

These will be much more cutting edge and experimental and a good way to move the community forward.

Found this, is it the same animal? Of course, it’s will be on a boat from China… take a month…

I spent $80 on the machine, I hate to double my costs for a more expensive controller…

What am I going to get out of this, as far as I know it’s just a 16 bit pwm over an 8 bit one ?

Even a $10 Arduino is faster than the mechanical parts will ever be…

It’s supposed to arrive Monday and I will see if I can talk to it with something…

I do have a couple of Atmel (Microchip) Dragons… most of the Arduino boards have an isp interface. The dragon is discontinued… :frowning:

:smile_cat:

That’s the one I will likely get too. At first for hacking and then I have a spare 15W Ortur laser module I’d probably mount on it.

On a trip for a few weeks now so won’t order until I get back but will monitor progress you guys make in the meanwhile.

I have been sitting here looking over all the post made on here.
I think that I have started a new fade. Big Boys & Cheaper Tinker Toys
Lets start taking bets on who can trick theirs out the most !
I love my boogie woogie music played on the key board and I crank it up.
So I’m thinking, mount a micro switch with its own little power supply and a doorbell !!
That way I know when my burn has completed when I have my boogie cranked. Maybe a pointer laser
aimed at a mirror ball on the ceiling. LOL

edit update: LOL ---- Buy one of those little robotic arms for teaching kids robotics. The burn completes,
laser goes to home rings the doorbell, lights up the mirror ball and last of all — it pours me a drink !!!

1 Like

I suspect the same. Out of several flash attempts of the ESP32, 2 were successful. After a bit of research it seems this is not an unusual occurrence with this module. I’ve got it flashed to what I want so I’ll leave it at that.

I chose the MakerBase board based on it using the ESP32 and the company’s reputation. My end game is to load FluidNC and run with that which I now have successfully done. Your point of supporting the homebrew board community is a good one! (One of) The creator of FluidNC, Bart Dring, has produced a few boards specifically playing to FluidNC unique capabilities. I have one on order.
Bart’s Tindie store:
https://www.tindie.com/stores/33366583/

FluidNC Wiki:
http://wiki.fluidnc.com

My personal curiosity pulls me down a lot of rabbit holes! I enjoy every adventure…
Steve …

I recall seeing some of the stuff he’s done and he’s got some really neat projects. Good to see the state of the art move forward. Hopefully this gets broader support from the community and doesn’t become a dead end.

I have the machine and it’s working on the Chinese software supplied with it…

I looked at the fluidcnc, not sure what you used…

What and where did you get the firmware… assuming you didn’t change out boards…

I can see it’s returning a error -19 when it tries to connect… from dmesg

jack@Kilo:~$ dmesg | tail
[197887.970050] usb 3-1: USB disconnect, device number 9
[197887.970330] usb 3-1: failed to send control message: -19
[197887.970522] ch341-uart ttyUSB0: ch341-uart converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
[197887.970549] ch341 3-1:1.0: device disconnected
[197891.604111] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd
[197891.753226] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523, bcdDevice= 2.63
[197891.753239] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[197891.753244] usb 3-1: Product: USB2.0-Serial
[197891.755579] ch341 3-1:1.0: ch341-uart converter detected
[197891.756814] usb 3-1: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0
jack@Kilo:~$

That is some bad software that comes with it… not to mention there is zero English…

I’ve got stlink running, but don’t know how to use it or get the binary. I can see the binary, I think but can’t seem to download it from github…

Do you have the binary?

:smile_cat:

@papa.zed was using fluidcnc on MKS DLC32. Not the JL1 board.

Check this post for the GRBL firmware that can be loaded on JL1.

Awesome! It is a funky little machine.

No doubt! and I am not touching the JL1 board, I’ll leave it as is. @berainlb is correct as I picked up the MKS board specifically as it is DLC32 based which is required for FluidNC. I have Fluid running nicely on the MKC board and will permanently mount it on the $69 and preserve the JL1 board for, I dunno, historical reasons. It will never be used again. I did pull down the firmware from the post @berainlb cited above. Maybe I will do something with the JL down the road…

Yesterday was a rainy day here so I got a few uninterrupted hours to work with the Fluid software. I’ll say this: it is very capable and probably the best documented piece of work I’ve come across in a long time. Works just fine with LightBurn!

How did you recover the internal settings? My Chinese isn’t very good and I didn’t seen any indication of being able to query the board for any information.

I hate to lose the configuration of this…

What did you do for configuration?

@berainlb, I will check out the link, thanks…

Ordered this from Aliexpress… won’t arrive until next month… :frowning:

Screenshot from 2022-08-09 06-21-03

Have a ‘box’ for yours?

:smile_cat:

How did you come up with the configuration data? I haven’t been able to talk to it with anything except that junk software that came with it in Chinese…

Looking at the data it’s sending…

Any notes or whatever you have from chasing down the schematic would be handy… if we can tweak an existing grbl for this, it’s probably just a simple change to get some of this working…

Doubt that includes the wifi.

:smile_cat:

Jack,

There is nothing to loose. JL1 is so primitive. Motor currents are set in hardware. It is very basic GRBL board.

If you read my messages in this post - I pull ESP12 off my board. I though it was interfering with serial, so I’ve removed it, but then found that it was not ESP12. ESP uses separate UART/set of pins of STM32 on this board. I’m not sure if any GIT source support two independent ports. I can imagine it can introduce mess while trying to buffer messages in order. Maybe there was a simple latch to chose one or the other and not to merge messaged. DK. But with only USB (CH340 on UART0, not built in USB) it works like a butter and I got surprisingly clean burns out of it, much better than expected for the price of this machine. Initially I had sloppy lines and double image. I had to tune/tighten/align all belts and eccentrics on rollers. I also set action in one direction only, originally it was burning both ways.

I may start GIT repository just for this board. Will be easier to share info and get folks to participate.

My GRBL settings based on default JL3 that this firmware came with. Main difference are homing (I’ve disabled for JL1) and table size. I’ve spent bit of time trying to get to home properly (NG). I got plenty of burns already and these settings works fine for what it is.

Maybe, some day, I will find time to compile proper GRBL for it, with homing and cursor support . I would use ESP3D for ESP12 as base for WiFi code, then it would have web socket that supported by most software.

All this thing is not pressing but for fun. I got x2 of these JL1 when they where $69 on Amazon. Another seller still have it for $79. Already got 4W_optical upgrade and MKS DLC32 is on order. Still, it would be fun to make proper firmware for this board.

The $69 vendor was out of them, so I go the $79 version. It’s really a great machine for the price…

They could have sold a boat load of these if they just put grbl on it’s controller and dump that software that came with it. Not like it would have cost them anymore.

It would be nice to have the original controller working…

:smile_cat: