We recently bought an intro machine for a Creality Falcon A1 (10w), and trying out Lightburn sw from recommendation from a friend. We have an issue however, that it will not keep the extractor fan or the Air assist on for the whole print job - it stops 3/4 way though - but then the extractor fan turns on at the end of the job for 10 seconds or so. This is not a hardware issue, and the Creality sw works with this(fans stay on the whole time), but it’s just not as nice as Lightburn interface. I just can’t use Lightburn as the fans turn off before the job is done.
I did try turning Gcode to sequential instead of batch, which fixed for a few prints but now it’s still sequential in the config but still shuts off the fans before the job is complete.
Any idea when can this be fixed, as I can’t move to buy from the trial until this can work?
I have tried the new Falcon software (1.8), and the firmware is most up to date according to the website, and I’m still seeing this issue.
The other thread describing the issue however, does seem very similar to my issues - and I’ve done some debugging around the GCODE file and believe I can reproduce and fix it pretty easily. I’m guessing a Creality bug but wanted to check with you.
The trigger for stopping both fans seems to be caused by “G1 S0”, for which I believe is triggering the lazer to move to 0 power, Creality falcon firmware shuts off the fans (a little time later) but they are never turned back on.
I’m not sure according to specs if the fans need to be turned back on; or if the falcon firmware should not have turned them off… It also seems to happen (turn fans off) if there is a DELAY command (G04 P1) - which for this machine is a 1 second delay, and also turns the fans off (after the delay for some reason?)
Anwyay, if I take a LightBurn file which shows the issue and then save gcode, if I either turn fans back on after each “G1 S0” command with an M8 - or just remove all “G1 S0” commands then it keeps the fans running the whole time when I run the raw gcode from Falcon software.
I haven’t found any “G1 S0” lines in files created with their own software, so they don’t see the issue there.
to update my last answer, the air assist only worked for 2 seconds after the first M8 was entered I didn’t have enough time to enter the second one. When I did the air assist as off; and putting in the command again it turned back on for 10 seconds (with an additional M8 there after 5 seconds which didn’t change anything)
Full Output Below. After first M8 air assist only stayed on for 2 seconds; I tried it again and it stayed on for 10 seconds then shut off. I agree firmware bug looks likely but I am on latest, any idea what ticket or where they are with a fix - or any bug ticket numbers I can use to ask them?
Back in August, Creality sent us an updated debug version of the firmware, 1.0.7.
We sent this firmware to the two users, and it fixed the air assist for them.
I’m quite sure, we reported back to Creality, but obviously, they didn’t update the firmware on their website yet. (It still shows version 1.0.6 dated 2025-03-25)
I’m sending you a DM with the link to that special debug version.
If you decide to reach out to Creality, you can refer to this thread, and the one mentioned earlier:
I have loaded the debug version of Creality software 1.07 for Falcon A1 firmware; and this version the issue for both fans - extractor and air assist looks to be fixed. The Lightburn support team is amazing.
I replied to my earlier support ticket to Creality (which was closed already) to try and reopen it with the information in this thread to ask for updated official software - and also requested a link to download a copy of the modified GRBL source due to the licensing as I couldn’t find the link available on their website.
As a side note; after updating the firmware the co-ordinates are off (about 1 inch left-to-right); which I’m hoping will rectify after a recalibration that I will try tomorrow.
We will also remind Creality on our channels to make the firmware available to everyone. (If it came with source code, we would even have the opportunity to see any errors and make suggestions for improvement—the original idea behind GPLv3.
I have a Creality Falcon A1 since recently, updated to the latest officially available 1.0.6 firmware. With that firmware I was able to control Air Assist between different layers, but I only did a little bit of experimentation. I did not try multiple layers with Assist on and off and on again or vice versa.
One caveat: It does lose position at the end of a job, so make sure to re-home if you re-run something because you didn’t have enough repeat cuts in the job and just want it to go one or two more.
Running `$152=0` makes the air assist turn off immediately after running M8. It basically turns on then off again. No further commands needed.
Running `$152=5` makes it run for maybe 2 seconds.
Running `$152=100` seems like it does make the pump run roughly indefinitely.
Running `$152=-1` yields an error that only positive numbers are allowed.
`$152` seems to accept numbers between 0 and 100.
Do we know whether this setting only governs Air Assist, or other things as well? I can at least see that the enclosure fan is running whenever Air Assist runs, but I am not sure whether that has its own control.
Did you mean to say M9 turns off the air assist? - M8 is expected to turn it on
Otherwise, what you report aligns with Creality’s documentation here
According to their link above, the $152 setting only controls " the waiting time to enter the standby state can be set to 0~100,.
Only Creality can tell for sure. It depends on how they implemented the firmware.
In vanilla GRBL firmware, the M7 command turns on an “alternative / Aux output”. This is usually wired to the chassi’s exhaust fan. M9 is expected to turn both fans off.
M8 turns it on, if $152 is set to 0-99 it seems to turn off as soon as the standby timer runs out (it’s not close to amount of seconds of $152’s value). $152=100 seems to be the magic value that disables standby (or I was too impatient).
Hi. Just wondering if this is something that I need? I’m new to all this and with a 86 yo. brain everything is not real clear. I am not having any issues with my Creality falcon, yet, so I was just wondering. Thank you.