So the software found the laser. Added and it is connected. I heard it play a nice little song. Thought I was good.
Laid out some text. Then tried to jog the laser over to the text area and nothing. Lightburn (free trial) just sits there and comes up with “Not Responding”
Let me know what I am doing wrong … I will keep pluggin along.
I want to see the ‘Console’ tab, in behind the ‘Cuts / Layers’ tab. If you don’t see anything in that, you’re not likely connected yet. GRBL-M3 mode is kid of the catch-all for things. Marlin devices can’t be automatically found / configured, so you have to do them manually, and I’d suspect this is a Marlin based unit.
That last one tells me that you aren’t connected properly. It has found something to talk to, but the baud rate is not correct. Go to Edit > Device Settings, and in the lower-right, try changing the Baud Rate value to 250,000 - that’s the most common value for Marlin machines. Then try connecting and post another shot of the console window.
That is very probably a Marlin device. Click the Devices button, double-click your controller, change it to Marlin (and name it accordingly). You’ll probably have to set the size as well, since it looks like you have it set to a 10mm working area.
You’ll have to find out how you’ve connected the laser to the machine - Is it a fan output, or something else? If it’s a fan output, is it tool index zero (the default) or a different one?
Then you still need to figure out how to fire the laser, I assume. The joys of Marlin and the extreme configurability means I cannot easily tell you how your laser is connected or what commands would fire it.
With GRBL or Smoothieware, there’s really only one answer because they have dedicated laser functions.