Eleksmaker Pro only making square

After 1 year not using the Eleksmaker I have taken it of the self,
I have replaced the Arduino Nano with a new one and flashed it with GRBL 1.1F
And it is running smooth in Laserweb.
But I want it to bring it to the next level. So I started with LightBurn

But I’m hitting some issues that I have no clue why.
I can move the laser in the proper directions.

If I use the square tool, it will make a square.
But that is the only thing it does.

Any other symbol or text will make a diagonal line of 1 cm. Or a L on its side. And it stops.
If I do a Square and a Circle than it will only do the Square

Any suggestions are welkom

Photo of what you’ve burned and a screenshot of LightBurn will help understand what you’re seeing.

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Thank you for your response and taking the time at the issue I have.
Here is a picture a 27mm square and a 25mm circle
I first did draw the square, did a run to burn it and deleted it. Than I did draw a circle and did a run.
As you see there is no circle, just a small line at the left side of the square about 10 % from the bottom


I see that your circle is blue. :slight_smile:

Open the Cuts / Layers window and jot down the Speed and Power.

Your circle is on the C01 layer and I’d imagine that your Speed and Power settings were higher on the layer where your square was drawn.

Select the circle, click C00 on the far left of all those colorful squares along the bottom row. The Circle will be on the C00 layer. It will be Black on the screen. Jot down the Power and speed Numbers now that you’re on the other layer.

Let us know what the difference is, if that solves the problem and if i’m a pretty good guesser. :smiley:

Bothe the square and circle are on C01 setting
500/20%

With the square selected, click C00 and let me know what the values become. :slight_smile:

C00 is also 500 mm a min with 20% power
I tried text again. Large Ariel font with the word Lightburn. It will stop after the outline of the letter L

That can be caused by a weak power supply.

If you can’t run the laser at the same time as both X & Y axis motors and the job halts it’s worth testing.

Easy test:
Unplug one of the motors and re-run the LightBurn job. it won’t know the motor is unplugged so it’ll run on one axis and burn back and forth. Move the wasteboard to prevent overburning and a fire. If the job finishes, plug the motor back in and retry. If it halts i’d suggest that we’re really on to the answer.

I run laserweb with 3 moters at 1000mm/min and laser on without any issue.

Can you use the Save Gcode button in the Laser window and save the g-code for a square, then do the same for a circle? Save with a .txt extension and upload here. Curious to see how these are getting generated.

This will isolate if the issue is in the design or in the laser.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m currently not on the same location as the computer/laser. But I will do it tomorrow morning.(CEST)

I have created an dual image square and circle in inkscape. and burned it with Laserweb. 500/60
and it did run without any problems.

I have also imported it in Lightburn. and only the Square was burned.

I have attached the gcode of the square and the gcode of the circle both looked good in the preview
circle.txt (1.4 KB)
square.txt (358 Bytes)

I also tried to disconnecting the x axis.
First square and than circle.
Square motions are good. once it moves to the circle. it stops

Because the x-axis is only 1 motor I have also tried the disconnect of both y axis motors.
Square is fine. it stops when it moved to the point of starting for the circle.

Here a x axis comparision for circle movement and square movement
Both the same movement speed and power.
Also both 10mm outer dimesion

Took a look at the files. I don’t see anything unusual with the circle g-code that should make it not work properly.

A few questions:

  1. Have you deliberately added the user start and user end scripts in the g-code tab of Device Settings?
  2. Is it possible to extract g-code from laserweb for the same circle job?
  3. Can you try running the LightBurn generated g-code in Laserweb?
  4. Can you connect to your laser using LaserGRBL? If so, what type of behavior do you get?
  1. I have followed a video a few years back.
    I notice that I have put in the incorrect start code
    I have put in M14 instead of M4
    ⚛️☢️ Videotutorial - Laser Engraver 2.5W A3 (400x300mm) [UHD 4K] ☢️⚛️ - YouTube
    around 20:20 time slot
  2. I will do this later today.
  3. Yes I have exported the GCode from LightBurn in to Laserweb and it did run correctly. for the circle and square
  4. I have just installed LaserGRBL (the latest version). I have imported the GCode of LightBurn and it did run without any problems. only complaining about M14 (must be M4) and M18

could it have something to do with the buffer in the Arduino Nano.
the amount of lines is a bit more than the Square.

if so I could switch from buffer to per line. could that help? or where can I alter the amount of lines send?
for testing, where could I find this setting?

I don’t necessarily think it’s necessarily inherent to the buffer itself but I had the same thought occurred to me that it could be related to the connection settings which is why I was exploring the LaserGRBL path.

Connection settings are found in Device Settings.

You may want to try 57600 baud. You typically want to stick to buffered transfer mode but might be worth experimenting with synchronous to see if you get different behavior.

The baud rate is not the issue. In all program’s it is 115200.
I changed from buffer to synchronic and it is now able to make a circle.
But i noticed that the circle has a misfire in it. (Turned off the laser in one step)

So I can only assume that lightburn sends to much data over. In one go.