Air Assist Turns On then Off when starting a Project

LightBurn Software Questions
1

Sorry in advance if this wasn’t the right place to post this question.

I have a GRBL 1.1 board that I want to use for a DIY laser project and had the hope of being able use the air assist command (M8).

If I send the M8 command to the board through the console, the output comes on and stays on until I issue the M9 command. All good I thought. :shushing_face:

But when I enable the air assist in LightBurn, the output comes on then immediately goes off when the job starts? :worried:

Is there some setting that I missed to allow it stay on throughout the entire job? Or did I miss something else entirely?

Running LightBurn 1.5.01 with M8 selected as the air assist enable.

Thanks for any help with my issue.

Dave

2

Random questions that might help out others with diagnostics

a) Your own compiled firmware?
b) which version exactly of GRBL 1.1f
c) pure GRBL or GRBLhal?

what happens if you manually issue commands

M8
M9

what if you do
M8 → go to move pannel → click fire to enable the laser in 1% power
Does air turn off then?

3

Running GRBL 1.1h on an Arduino Uno. As previously mentioned, issuing the M8 and M9 commands through the console works fine.

After some tweaking of the GRBL settings using the info from the documentation I have managed to get the air assist to work. However I’ve run into a new problem.

When I run a job the laser window shows the job running and percentage complete. But when it finishes it doesn’t stop at 100% but hangs at 99%.

GRBL

The counter on the left goes into a negative count. This is a two second test burn running for 7 seconds past completion. I had to manually stop it.

I figure I’m missing something rather simple but I can’t figure it out.

4

I am assuming you manually added your machine to Lightburn and selected GRBL (top from the list) correct

feels like some messages are being lost
Lightburn is basicly waiting for a “iddle” state from controller so it knows it finished
So something is being lost half way through

A suggestion just for diagnostic purpuses if you can
Save Gcode (1% power for safety)
Close lightburn
Install and run lasergrbl → run GCODE you saved
Same behaviour?

5

Did what you suggested but an error was thrown by LaserGRBL.

GRBL2

Not sure what this means?

UPDATE

I checked the info from the link in the error description and found a reference to clone Arduino boards not always working correctly. I switched to an original Uno and everything seems to be working fine now.

6

check left side window, any error will be explicit there

7

You beat me to the post. Thanks very much for your help!

8

interesting so if it works correctly on lasergrbl from start to finish. and it goes iddle as expected

You might want to review your device on lightburn. make sure you are in fact using GRBL top one and recheck the device settings window for any setting that is not correct.
Its been a while since i used an Arduino or a clone so we might need the mind hive to come to the rescue

So i would sugest posting edit → device settings screenshot
And console dump when typing
$i
$$
so others can double check settings

9

Hoping this is what you were after.

[VER:1.1h.20190825:]
[OPT:V,15,128]
ok
ok
$0=10
$1=25
$2=0
$3=0
$4=0
$5=0
$6=0
$10=1
$11=0.010
$12=0.002
$13=0
$20=0
$21=0
$22=0
$23=0
$24=25.000
$25=500.000
$26=250
$27=1.000
$30=1000
$31=0
$32=1
$100=80.000
$101=80.000
$102=250.000
$110=6000.000
$111=6000.000
$112=1000.000
$120=1000.000
$121=1000.000
$122=10.000
$130=410.000
$131=400.000
$132=200.000

I took these settings from my AtomStack board and applied them to the UNO.

10

Edit → Device settings in Lightburn would help a bit too

11

As an FYI, the air assist works now with LightBurn. As mentioned, my issue all came down to using a clone Uno board.

Here are the device settings you requested.

GRBL5
GRBL5659×741 48.6 KB

12

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.