I recently got a new Atomstack S10 Pro engraver and started learning and engraving. Mostly stainless steel pedants. Everything was fine, I was using values from manual - 400 mm/m and 100% power for it in Lightburn and output power was high.
At one point Laser stopped engraving completely, it would move but it didn’t draw anything - even on wood. So I removed config files (prefs.ini and prefs.ini.old) and re-added the device - found this on the forum. That got it to work again but it works with much lower output. As you can see in the images bellow, those images with full black lines is how it worked before and those little weaker texts is how it works now. All with the same settings.
I tried:
Remove config/device in multiple combinations.
Cleaned the lens, but didn’t help. And I had like maybe 1-2 hours of active work so I didn’t expect that to be an issue.
Checked config for power settings and I have $30=1000 same as S-Max value in device settings.
Does anyone know what could cause this lower output? I’m no longer sure is this an issue with Lightburn config or with the Laser. Any advice or idea is helpful because I don’t know what to try anymore.
Would need an ammeter.
There are other possibilities also, like misconfiguration.
You’ve checked s-max and $30=1000 and you are setup on plain GRBL?
Did it stop in middle of job or not start at beginning of job?
You are still on mm/min and not switched to mm/sec.?
I posted a video here with my config in LightBurn and with engraving process. I also sent this to Atomstack support.
If you mean before when it didn’t engrave anything, it was moving for the whole duration of the job but nothing was engraved. Like the laser was not firing at all. I don’t have a video of that, but after removing config and device and re-adding it to LightBurn it started engraving again but with lower power.
Sorry for the late response, I was trying to get an answer from Atomstock and to enable old Windows laptop for LaserGRBL. It was first time using LaserGRBL it’s not a nice image but I think I got the settings right. Still low output. Marked with two red boxes on the knife. Still much lower than the really black ones.
If somebody owns AtomStack S10 Pro with 10 W can you maybe provide how does the result looks on stainless steel with 400 mm/m and 100% power? Or any other 10W laser?
Or if anybody has any more ideas, I would like to hear them.
Lightburn and lasergrbl giving same results seem to point to hardware issue. Controller or laser failing. Maybe try reflashing your controller firmware.
Regarding updating firmware I was avoiding that since I started communication with AtomStock support to track down the issue and I didn’t want to add another variable to this.
I had to provide engraving/cutting videos and images of different materials with different parameters. It was hard for them to estimate but in the end they confirmed that there is decay in the laser intensity of the laser module and they are sending a new laser module (waiting for it at the moment).
If anyone is interested in details. Last scenario where they actually confirmed it, is that they asked me to cut 3 mm plywood with 200 mm/m and 100% power. I didn’t had 3 mm one, so they suggested that I cut 2 mm plywood I got with the laser. Ofc, that cut it through since that parameters should be enough to cut much higher according to material parameters of the laser.
Basswood - 5mm → 170 mm/m - 80% - 1 pass
Bamboo - 2mm → 400 mm/m - 80% - 1 pass
So I sent another video where I used 2 mm plywood and tried cutting an example .nc file they provided with the laser - the file is acutally called 2mm plywood cutting dog.nc. That file was using 400 mm/m and 100% power. That wasn’t cut, it was clearly visible that lines in the Y axis orientation were cut but lines in X axis orientation weren’t cut.
So if anyone is having a similar issue I hope this will help. Thank you all for the support and suggestions.
