How to permanently write to controller

Hi there,

When engraving certain things the acceleration is too much so I slowed it down a bit. However whenever I turn my machine off, the controller settings reset and I have to re-enter them and test again before I cut or engrave.

How do I permanently write those settings to the controller?

Thank you for helping a NoOb

Some control boards are designed to return back to their factory defaults to help ensure things are set the way they want. This is a bad design in our opinion. While this may help them initially with support, folks messing up their settings and such, Support Tech can just have the customer re-boot, and things are back to a known state. Bad, because the board can only be written to a certain number of times, then it will start to fail, not being able to write to these chips again.

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I have no idea what controller or system a Atomstack is but if you use LightBurn’s Machine settings you should see the Load and the Write buttons. Write will write your changes to the firmware is that is supported.

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@Rick Thanks, that was my fear. One of your support guys in the forum @raykholo has an AtomStack he took apart so I was hoping he could weigh in on this. I can just reduce speeds overall but I’d love to have it permanently written to the controller because recalibrating sucks!

@DougL Thank you, the problem is that I’ve written them via GRBL and Lightburn and they don’t stay written. My biggest gripe about the setup so far, but it’s just a toy to most and for me it’s just entry level to gain a better understanding before I go bigger. Thanks for the reply.

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Here is some more background on this subject from said “Ray”. :wink: Looks like you may be able to flash upgrade the firmware to the publicly supported version of Grbl, but we (LightBurn) have not directly confirmed as yet.

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Yeah I read that, but I was hoping for some more concrete because he had just received it as of that post.

In that thread, there is a link to someone that says:

WARRANTY-VOIDING hacks I did: - Flashed Arduino Optiboot. - Flashed GRBL 1.1h.

We will be getting back to the evaluation of this laser setup, corp. move(s), onboarding additional staff and the steady level of support all have priority, but we will get back to this testing and evaluation again soon. :wink:

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Yeah, I read the whole thread and I was hoping to hear more from him with his experience with the machine etc. I don’t want to fry my controller or brick it. $500 is still $500

So it is something the machine vendor has implemented… have you asked them to provide the firmware which allows you to change acceleration, telling them why, and/or ask for instructions for fixing it so that firmware changes are saved in flash memory and loaded between power cycles?

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Sure, I’m happy to make a guest appearance.

As Rick vaguely alludes to, I’ve been in the process of getting a new place and moving for the past while, as well as wearing many other hats, so have not been able to make much more progress than what I shared in that topic linked above.

  • The manufacturer appeared to have butchered EEPROM support in their version of GRBL that they flashed on the controller and shipped with their units.
  • You’ll need to flash stock GRBL onto the board, plain and simple. There are resources on how to do it on the internet. I haven’t yet done it myself for this machine so I don’t know if there are any hurdles that will need to be overcome. I hope that there are not.

LightBurn just makes the software, and we’re trying to help our users out by creating resources for how to use these machines (it’s on my roadmap for the future). We did not make, configure, or sell that machine to you. Ultimately, if you are unhappy with how they did things, or what you will have to do to get it to work better, I would encourage you to contact the machine vendor directly with your concerns/ feedback.

These are very strongly “DIY” machines, with an emphasis on the “Y”.

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I haven’t heard back yet and probably likely never will. I was just hoping I had missed some setting in GRBL.

I’m not unhappy with it, just wanted to make sure I am not going to brick it if I try to flash it or if I even had to in the first place. I’ll just deal with the limitations. You get what you pay for and it’s entry level for me.

Was wondering if I had missed a setting somewhere on either end. Also you never know, thought you might have messed with it more.