Hi, I have a Chinese blue and grey 80w laser and been using it with lightburn for about 3 months with no issues but recently I’ve started having issues.
Part way through a design it’ll just start doing its own thing, such as start cutting a line then it’ll just cut a squiggly line instead of completing the programmed line.
I try to frame something and it just does part of it them freezes, it doesn’t frame the whole thing like before.
Sending something to the laser it will say job paused and won’t start.
If I select part of a design then click the preview button it’s selecting everything.
Can anyone help please. I’m using a Mac, I recently had an update which downloaded lightburn 2 which I’ve now deleted thinking that may be the issue. The update one lightburn has been updated but still having issues. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks.
You will be asked how you are connected, via USB or Ethernet and the version of the lightburn software. It’s nice to have as much information as possible for the support people.
Search the site for mac related issues, there are some issues with how Apple is handling the communications…
I have downloaded this so will try it when i’m back home but it hasn’t fixed the issue of being able to select parts not the whole page. Do you know what I can do to fix this?
If this part isn’t fix it’s likely it’ll send the whole job to the printer rather than the selected design.
I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Did you make an array using Virtual Array, and want to only send part of it? (You can’t do that - have to make the array non-virtual).
So for example, before I could select one of these and see the total estimated time and send that to the laser.
Now it will only let me select the whole file. I can’t select individual things to view. Therefore I don’t think it’s going to allow me to send part of a design to the printer.
If I design more than one thing on a sheet but only want to view some of it, I can’t. Does that make sense.
I’m a new Lightburn Mac user and have been seeing similar issues. I just put my blue and grey on my network over Ethernet and all the problems went away.
At some point I’d be happy to see USB fixed, but honestly if you’re a Mac user and struggling just take the minimal effort to try Ethernet is my suggestion.
I’ve tried to tell so many people this, but the ease of USB makes it very attractive. We’re genuinely considering removing USB as an option altogether if I can’t figure out a way to make it reliable.
I have a side project we’re working on, using a Raspberry Pi as a relay. It would plug into the laser with a network cable, and connect to your home WIFI network, and LightBurn will talk to the laser through the Pi. Simple setup, will cost about $50 (price of the Pi, power supply, SD card and cable), and throughput is 600kb/sec in testing. Not ready for release yet, but getting there.
Sounds great to me. I basically do this already on my 3D printer with OctoPrint, and it’s easy and convenient.
At the moment I have a spare old Airport Express I just plugged my laser into, essentially doing the exact same thing. All my issues went away, it’s responsive and available as soon as everything boots up, and I don’t have to route a USB cable over to my laptop in the garage which was a slight pain.
The nice thing about using the Pi is that I can use TCP between it and LightBurn, and UDP (as required by Ruida) from the Pi to the laser, through the cable. TCP to the Pi means it’ll be reliable, even over WIFI, where UDP is not.
Can you fix the Rasberry Pi set up to use WiFi WPA2 Enterprise login? My school uses that protocol and apparently it doesn’t pass UDP through. Thanks for the work!
The Pi would ONLY connect to the network via TCP. The UDP packets are between the Ruida and the Pi only, via cable - your network would never see that traffic.
Hello all,
Also a new user of LightBurn.
I’m running a Macbook Air with BigSur o/s.
I have a problem with the cut performance as it seems to run for so long and then stops, even though LightBurn says its still running.
Looks like a buffer overload so the above discussion makes sense. Also Lightburn seems to get its knickers in a twist and stops responding properly.
The solution I found was to select parts of the design and get it to execute that. It returns to home after it completes and then you can select another section to cut. Its useful if you have grouped several pieces together as you then don’t need to select individual lines.
I’ve brought bits to connect through Ethernet cabel and it’s working fine now. I wasn’t able to do this before due to location of my laser but worth the extra cost to prevent the issues I was having.
Can you help me to understand how I can use an ethernet cable please? My laser is in the garage, there is not a router in the garage. How would I go about connecting it to wifi?
My hubby is more technical than me so he did it but we got a Google WiFi home system to extend the WiFi to my gagare where my laser is and then plugged the cabel into that and the laser I think. It required some set up with the IP address but it didn’t take him to long to sort. Check out some online videos
