At this point I am unable to use air assist with my SM350.
I am running the 40W blue head which has air assist (official snapmaker product)
I have air assist enabled in the layer i’m using.
I have it enabled under device settings, using M8
When I generate the Gcode I do not see M8, or M08 (Air on), or M9 / M09 (air off)
I manually added M08 to the startup Gcode, and M09 in the ending Cgode, and can confirm that the air pump runs and stops as expected, but of course for the whole job, not where I selected it in the layers.
So I’ve told LB in two different places that I want air assist on, and I’m still not getting air.
I did see a post in the forums that claims that lightburn is preventing air assist on the snapmaker machines because SM didn’t have air assist on their machines. At one time this was true, but SM is modular, and now has (and needs!) air assist.on the 40W blue laser.
Other than having air on for the whole job (causing other problems) is there a practical workaround for this?
Have I missed something in setting up LB for the snapmaker?
Others are reporting the same issue.
I installed 2.0 RC 2 and have the same issue.
Ok, after working with LB tech support, the solution is to NOT use the snapmaker profile, but to use a GRBL profile under Laser Tools, Manage Devices, Create Manually. I used the plain “GRBL” profile, and the only thing I really had to do was enter the bed size (350/320 on the SM350) When I output the job under that profile, the air pump is controlled as I expect with no mods needed to the Gcode.
Note: I’m running LB2.0 RC2 now. Not much point investing time in earlier versions with 2.0 release coming soon.
I did notice that in LB 1.7 the test box was off by 12.3mm in Y, and that the pointer offset (at least in the Y axis) did nothing. In LB2 RC2, the pointer offset works as expected in both X and Y.
Also FWIW, aligning the lower left corner of the test paper with the alignment cross on the 40W blue laser put the test box cut precisely where it should be, 20mm from the bottom and left edges as designed. IOW: No offset adjustment. I just moved the head so the cross was just barely on the edges of my precision test post-it note, and set that as the work origin. In LB I have that set so that the work origin is the lower left.
So, correct alignment and air assist in one go!