As most people are aware, Lightburn for fiber will be releasing this year and I seriously cant wait! I would like to purchase a new 100 watt mopa soon and have a dilemma. If I order it with an EZ3 board, I will be able to do relief engraving but will not have access to LB when released. If I order with EZ2 board, I can not do relief engraving once LB releases, BUT I will be cruising on LB fairly soon, which is a good thing!. SO…has anyone heard rumors about LB being able to handle EZ3 boards in the future? If I had to struggle through a year or year and a half with EZ3, I’d consider going that route. This may sound trivial to some but its been driving me insane and I’m having a difficult time deciding which route to go. I could always buy it with EZ3, order a EZ2 board and downgrade once it arrives, I’m just not sure if that’s a bad idea or not. Anyone out there with knowledge care to offer an opinion?? TIA!
Here let me add the right tags so you can get some more Galvo folks looking at your dilemma.
Thank you for your inquiry. The EzCad3 boards use a different enough communication protocol that we don’t have a specific plan for them yet. We have a machine here, but haven’t connected it yet, as we have a few other things on the go presently, along with previous feature commitments to some of our vendors. We understand folks want an option, and we plan to investigate providing, it is just a timing thing.
To help with decision-making, we are still on track for a Q2 '22 release, (but it is software and stuff occurs 
).
If willing, you could head over to our Suggestion Site and make a request for “EZ3 board support” with a description, so others can start voting it up. We use that to help with prioritizing our efforts and can inform when the status of a suggestion has changed. 
Thank you, I didn’t even notice the “tag” option. I will keep that in mind for the future!
Thank you for the reply. I know all good things take time and I’m pretty content knowing it will be available for EZ2 as it is. Ill make sure to drop a post on the suggestion site as well. EZ3 for 2023!!!
Have you seen some of the 3D engraving that Lightburn has managed to do with EZCad 2? There are a few examples on the Facebook Lightburn Galvo Group, this is one of them.
I have not seen that and it does looks pretty damn good! I can live with those results for a couple years until EZ3 is supported. I honestly can’t imagine relief engraving would be profitable considering the time it takes to do, but it would be good to have the option to do it. Thanks for the reply!
Alex from the “Laser Everything” group has a video showing how to downgrade an EzCad3 machine to version 2, and it’s also possible to go the other way, upgrading from 2 to 3. The connectors used to interface with the scan head are the same, but other connections, like those to the rotary or other peripherals, are different, so you might need to buy a connection kit or just do some soldering yourself, if you’re comfortable with that.
I haven’t looked at the EzCad3 communication in enough depth to know if it will be possible to support that hardware yet. At first glance, it appears that it should be possible, but there are some unknown data fields in there that could be a checksum or encrypted key of some kind, which would throw a wrench in things if that’s the case. I won’t know for sure until I actually try to connect to one.
From what I’ve seen about you, Oz, I feel pretty confident you’ll get it up and running at some point in the future. You don’t seem like the type to give up too easily. I have seen Alex’s vid and I have no issues with soldering, that has been an option I have been considering. Thanks for the reply Oz!
I know this is probably not going to happen but… Are you guys considering partnering with a vendor for machines you know will work with the new lightburn for galvo? I know a million sellers will start slapping your logo on their pages the second this software is released because everyone I can think of has been praying for this day for a long time and I can already see the trash lasers sellers promoting their lasers with your logo. Ideally a list on your home page would be great or stretching it even more you awesome people sell the hardware directly to people like me who will be buying a galvo the second this software is released. While you are at it can you throw in vinyl cutting software, CNC, and some photoshop type software rofl. I just prefer the UI better then anything else and would pay an embarrassing amount of money to control every device. Again I am not expecting this stuff but my first request would be great and second would be a dream. Thank you all for the amazing work everyone does that allows people like me to learn software in minutes vs years.
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