I’ve been fighting for a few days now with the controller on a Creality-produced laser module mounted on an Ender 3 chassis. I’m having two separate problems; any kind of image-mode burning is just completely wrong, and that’s a separate issue to tackle down the road.
Right now the problem I’m having is that the laser isn’t shutting off during traversal moves, so it’s burning lines into the material surface that shouldn’t be there. I’m reasonably certain that I’ve got things set up correctly for the gcode, but I’d appreciate someone reviewing it to make sure that the gcode I’m using is appropriately including laser shutoffs and that the problem is on the side of the controller not executing those shutoffs.
I’m having some mixed results. Stand by, I’m going to try doing a test burn in a few minutes. Previously I was using the GRBL M3.
I believe that S1 versions that plug into the printer controller use Marlin, but as far as I’m aware the standalone “parasite” boxes like the one I’m using look like they have the brains of the Creality “Falcon” laser boxes and seem to run GRBL.
I’ll post the test burn and associated gcode in a few. Mostly right now trying to narrow down whether the problem is user error in Lightburn or Creality’s firmware being dimwitted.
You can type $$ in console and it will do a config dump
$32 should be 1
If so, then make sure you use GRBL and not GRBL M3 on the controller pick on LigntBurn
Yeah, if this test burn goes wonky I’m going to bring it in and plug it into Lightburn and see what I can deal with. Ideally I need to get it set up for offline, since I don’t have a PC set up that can drive it in the space where the laser lives. Gonna call that Plan B or C or so.
Here are the test burn and the gcode that created it. You can see the straight traversal lines where it’s just not shutting off the laser. I looked through the gcode but I don’t actually know what a laser shutoff command looks like, so I don’t know what I’m looking for yet.
Hmm, I’m starting to lean more toward the possibility it’s a hardware issue. Console commands that should be controlling the laser… aren’t. Am I right in thinking that an M3 command sent directly through the console should be enough to turn off the laser?
This issue has been solved. It was a bad-on-delivery unit, but getting a replacement out of their Amazon store was painless and the new unit works fine.
