Can't control laser movement

LightBurn Software Questions
1

Hello all! I am a complete newbie to the world of lasers, so be gentle, please. I purchased an Eleksmaker A3 frame with an Endurance Lasers 10W+ Diode. The board looks like a clone of the Mana SE, but not sure. It has an Arduino attached and I have flashed grbl 1.1f onto it (came with Benbox). I have heard awesome things about Lightburn, and wanted to give it a try, so I downloaded the trial. I also downloaded T2 and everything works with that, so I know I must have something wonky with Lightburn.

I installed and setup the trial. I set my laser to the GRBL (1.1f or later) with high freq PWM connecting via USB.

I am able to set up a burn on the software and run the program. It works and burns! However, if I try to move either of the axis via the buttons (just move it to left or right or forward or back a bit), it does not move. I can hear “something” kind of fire up, but nothing moves. Then, to get it to respond at all, again, I need to use the “laser” tab and reconnect to the machine. Then, I can run a program again.

The other odd thing is that the option to “fire the laser” or turn it on does not appear.
Any help would be appreciated. I downloaded the trial way too early, and time is running out!

2

It’s not odd - it’s completely intentional, as it’s extremely dangerous for CO2 users. You can enable the “Laser Fire Button” in the device settings and restart LightBurn, and the button will appear.

Regarding the movement commands, most likely you haven’t changed the movement speed in the move panel and the default might be too high for the Eleks board. See if lowering the number to something like 50mm/sec (3000mm/min) helps.

And if you need a bit more trial time, email us with the trial ID and we can extend it a bit.

3

Awesome, I will try that!

Double AWESOME! Thanks.

4

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Sorry, but that did not solve my problem. It looks to me like my speed is set to 20, but I’m not sure what that means. I tried 10, but it did the same thing.

5

HA! So I figured it out! 20 is too SLOW for the machine. I increased to 1000 and Bob’s my Uncle! I can smell another sale of Lightburn software coming!

6

Looks like you have set your ‘Units’ to use millimeter/minute meaning it will take 1 minute to move the laser head 20mm as you have it set now. Adjust the ‘Speed’ setting from 20 to 3000.