I’ve recently moved my laser burner to a new computer (moving burner to it’s home in the garage) and after trying multiple software I’m giving Lightburn a try (Benbox/Lasergrbl/EleksMaker all failed)…and I’m having one issue and that is it won’t power the laser enough to burn anything.
I flashed the Nano board with GRBL 1.1f (the latest on the site) and Lightburn sees the laser and it will move the laser head. I even managed to burn a hexagon on my junk board but had to manually set the power/speed. What I need to know is how to set the software up so I can load a picture (b/w) and have the software power the laser as needed. Can anyone point me to a YouTube video or other tutorial that will help?
As another member previously posted, “Scroll down to the bottom “operating instructions” and follow that. Once you have it working in elekscam, it should work in lightburn. Follow the instructions to the letter and that will get you up and running…”
Also, make sure your settings are in mm/minute, not mm/sec. If you try to move the laser faster than it can go, by entering “1000”, not realizing it’s in mm/sec, the output power will be reduced by the controller to account for the fact that it can’t go as fast as you asked it to.
Thanks for the info, it helped mostly. I can get the laser to work now and move…but it’s super faint when burning anything. I’ve set the power to 100% and set the speed to mm/min but when I go into Device Settings > Additional Settings everything in there is in mm/Second instead of mm/min and I can’t figure out where to make/save the changes. I’m also unable to get text to come up as solid letters instead of outlines…once again I can’t find a setting for this.
Thank you for reporting the issue with ‘Device Settings’ → ‘Additional Settings’ display not changing to reflect the units of measure you have set in the ‘Settings’ window. I will create a bug report for this.
Just to be clear, the settings available from the ‘Device Settings’ → ‘Additional Settings’ window are for controlling the cut simulator to best match the settings in your system. When adjusted and tuned to match your system setup, the time estimate displayed in the ‘Preview’ window become more accurate to your actual processing time for a given job.
For the faint burn, we will need to review a few of your configuration settings to offer suggestions for resolution. Please type $$ into the LightBurn console and hit return. Copy and paste the entire contents here (scrollable window) for review. Additionally, post a screen capture of your entire LightBurn screen making sure the ‘Cuts’ window is visible.
When wanting to create “solid letters instead of outlines…”, place the text on its own layer and set that layer to ‘Fill’. Without being able to “see” what you have set, nor the output, my guess is you have the text set to ‘Line’. It should be set to ‘Fill’ to get solid letters.
Others have found our general LightBurn interface and usage tutorials to be helpful when learning LightBurn. We also have other helpful videos on our youtube channel.