Hi there, new to lasers and lightburn. I have a question about loading and starting a gcode.
When I design a project and save it and then when I press load gcode the machine starts engraving the project right away without even pushing start. I don’t think this is normal is it?
Thank you
Rob
Where are you doing this?
In lightburn
Screenshot please. I’m not familiar with anything like this in LightBurn.
How are you doing this part of it? There’s no operation like this and nothing on the screen like this that I’m aware of.
Or are you pushing the Run GCode button and then picking a file? If the latter, then yes, you’d expect it to stream the gcode as-is to the laser. Would you expect something else?
I press run gcode. The file folder opens, I select file, press open and machine starts. I figured as a safety it would prompt you to hit start when you are ready that’s all.
Got you. Sounds like based on your initial description you were conflating the “Run GCode” button with a “load” gcode type function.
No, the button works as advertised. It’s meant as a convenience to be able to send saved gcode to the laser. To be honest I’m almost surprised this is offered at all in LightBurn.
Keep in mind that unlike other programs gcode is not considered an in-memory format or even a storage format for internal use. It’s a short-lived final format only meant to communicate to the laser controller.
By the way, is there a reason why you’re going through this workflow? Normally you’d use the Play button to start a job if you’ve done the design work in LightBurn.
Well I use that way because that’s how I do it on my cnc machine. Like I said I’m new to lasers and lightburn. I design and save jobs for later use.
What other way can I start a job?
Thank you
Yes that makes sense lol.
Thanks for the reply
My suggestion would be to not save the g-code as your job but rather save the LightBurn project in it’s native .lbrn format. That’s what you get when you go to File->Save or Save As. When you are done designing your job, then you use the various alignment tools like Frame in the Laser window. When you’re done with that you push the Play start button to actually start your job.
Overall, a similar workflow to what you’re used to but not bringing g-code into it.
