Help with using software

[Joe75 (Mrs Joanne Robson)]

hi, me again, so got the laser connected to the software but having trouble positioning laser to where i need it to engrave, so been manually positioning it. Anyway once i position it manually by moving the laser head into position and start the engraving process, its engraving the lines where the laser is moving from letter to letter. Dont know what im doing wrong but im new to all this so any help or advice would be appreciated for this newbie!!

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

As you continue your laser journey and visiting here, you will find the search button at the top-right of every page on this forum. It is a very helpful tool for finding answers to subjects that may have been covered already. This can save you a lot of time.

In this case, we get asked this so often, we made an FAQ for it:

Laser not turning off between cuts? (burning during travel moves)

If you have a GRBL device, and your laser is still on when moving between shapes, like this: [image] It most likely means you are using GRBL 1.1f or later, but do not have the controller in Laser Mode. Fix this by typing $32=1 in the Console window and pressing enter If you have a Ruida or other DSP controller and are seeing this happen, it is most likely a dying high-voltage power supply unit (PSU). The drive circuit that turns the laser power off and on tends to go first, before the part …

[Joe75 (Mrs Joanne Robson)]

Hi thanks for your reply, ive done that now thank you, but now im not getting any marks on the wood from the laser. So sorry for this lol, but total newbie at this software and this machine.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

@Joe75

ive done that now

No need to apologize, we all started as newbies at some point, but we do need details.

What, exactly, have you “done”? Details of what / where you started, what got changed and the results will help us provide the most appropriate and fastest responses.

[Joe75 (Mrs Joanne Robson)]

Hi Rick, got it working on some bits now, adjusted the laser head and had a play around with the trace settings and seems like that’s going good. Only problem I’m finding is trying to engrave photos as the trace image setting doesn’t really give a good image of the photo, but if I try to go straight to engrave image the laser isn’t making any marks on the wood, and instead of the setting saying fill or line it just says image. Is there something I need to do to be able to do photos?
Thanks again

[LightBurn (Oz)]

It says Image because it’s an image, and those have different settings.

Engraving photos is probably the most difficult thing to do with a laser, so be prepared to run a lot of small test images for various speeds & power settings.