We have a older 100W laser, C02, water cooled. The PC controlling the laser was running Win 7 with a version of EZCAD. The PC hard drive died and so we’ve lost the knowledge of what the laser model so that we can get compatible drivers. When we connect the controller to the USB on the PC, the drive registers as “unknown device”. We would love to use Lightburn with this older laser if possible.
Our goal would be to connect a Win 10 PC back to this laser and get it working again.
Just just attempted the LightBurn 1.3.01 install with the EZCAD driver install option. I then ran the Device Discovery Wizard. It did not detect my device. I’m googling the “Zadig” workaround now.
I just tried the Zadig workaround and my laser controller comes up as “Unknown Device #1” in the tool with the Driver box displaying (NONE). I also tried drivers from lasers only: [Free EZCAD Downloads – Lasers Only](https://Lasers Only)
I also attempted the windows online driver search.
I tried the Lightburn device detect after running the Zadig installer and it now shows the laser controller as “Unknown Device #1” under Universal Serial Bus devices.
I did find out from Reddit that the laser is an IPG Photonics CO2 laser and the controller board was manufactured by Sintec Optronics in Singapore. The Reddit poster suggested that I need to find an IPG compatible driver. I am working on that research now.
And just what brand is this laser? It should have some sort of label affixed somewhere to the machine, unless it is an odd custom build. (Edit… I see you have found the brand).
A lot of old CO2 lasers ran on proprietary firmware (Gravograph, for example) and will never work with LightBurn. Also, the laser may require old drivers that are not easily available to install in Windows 10.
The age of this laser is proving to be a challenge with finding software drivers that work with the controller board. I do know that we were using a version of EZCAD on the Win 7 PC before the hard drive died.
Yeah, old drivers can be a problem… I ran into that issue with a different sort of device I was using (a chronograph, actually), and the only way I could ever get it to connect to a computer was to find an old windows XP laptop to use. The manufacturer eventually told me that they did not have any modern drivers that would work with the old machine, and that newer Windows versions would not accept the old drivers.
Only option in my case was to buy a new chronograph or to buy an old, but still working Windows XP (or even Windows 98) laptop that had an RS232 port.
If you (or a friend) have “geeky” skills, you might consider a replacement of the controller board and running it as a pure GRBL machine.
New clue: I was able to recover the LMCUSB.sys driver file from the Win7 PC hard drive. This Win 7 PC was the original computer driving this IPG laser until it failed. Using this as a clue to what the driver file name is, I’ve been google searching for matching drivers. I haven’t found anything yet that works,
If you open the “Ports” node in Device Manager can you see a port assigned to the laser? Turn laser off and back on to confirm that the port is being created for the laser.
Success! Thanks for everyone’s help. We had to install Win 7 32-bit (might have been able to do Win 10 32-bit, but whatever). The drivers were the JCZ All in one version and the EZCAD is v2.7.6. The drivers installed and we got the laser working again.
