The Sculpfun G9 galvo has only recently had full Lightburn support but I’m finding some odd behaviour with framing that I’m hoping can be resolved.
The issue is that while framing works as expected most of the time, every now and then it does something odd like increasing the power output so it marks the material or uses the IR laser instead of the usual blue light at low power.
Not only is this ruining material but is also dangerous as the enclosure is up when framing.
I’m using the device profile and settings provided by Sculpfun but I’ve attached screenshots of the settings as maybe something needs to be changed.
Something else I have noticed that may be related is that after framing if I try to focus the machine the 2 dots won’t line up. Turning it off and on again resolves that.
Any advice would be appreciated as apart from this framing problem the recent lightburn support is great.
Which device profile did you use? The latest one?
I recently had no bugs left, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t any, still. How frequent do you experience this?
Hey, good to see you on here as I’ve been using your guides for assistance.
I’m using the device profile from the sculpfun website and the lens correction figures from the USB stick that came with the machine. It’s had the same issues on 2 lightburn installs on different computers running Lightburn Pro on Windows 10 & 11.
It’s happens frequently enough to be a nuisance but it still catches me out, perhaps 1 in 10. It’s hard to tell as it varies, like yesterday for example I did about 8 tests and then for some reason the power of the blue light increased when framing and ruined the material on the last 2.
I’ve been trying to work out if its linked to an action before framing. At first I thought maybe adjusting the focus was changing something for the next job as I noticed that if I focus, frame and then focus again the 2 dots have moved / no longer line up but it doesn’t appear to make the framing switch to the IR laser or increase power. (Turning the machine off / on makes the dots line up again)
Before Lightburn 2.02 it would happen if you framed a job, stopped the frame and then framed again. That pretty much always caused the IR laser to turn on rather than the blue light, like in this video by another user.
But since installing 2.02 its become less regular and more random. I noticed 2.04 has been released now so will try that.
Do you see anything in my settings that differs from yours?
I used SGD laser for a long time (I designed in LB, exported to SGD), but now I switched to LB more or less completely. I had no issues since I switched to the official 2.0 and the latest laser profile. Maybe I’m just lucky
No luck with your device profile sadly, still gives the same issue.
I did 24 tests back to back and it worked as normal, framing with the Blue Light as it should.
But after turning the machine off and coming back a bit later it has now gone back to the problem behaviour where the first frame uses blue light and the second frame turns on the IR laser.
Restarting lightburn makes no difference, turning the laser on/off will allow it to frame once using the Blue Light but then reverts to using the IR.
What I have discovered is that if I then run a job using the IR laser (turn off laser 2 in layer settings) and then turn laser 2 back on it will then frame using the blue light again multiple times, until the machine is reset and it goes back to as before (first frame BL, second IR).
After doing all the above I tried updating to Lightburn 2.04 which hasn’t made a difference to the framing issue but has added a new problem with the framing boundary now having additional lines as if its connected to the previous object framed. I’ll revert to 2.02 and see if that goes away.
I ticked to install the EZCAD galvo driver when I updated, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
Update:
I’ve made a video showing the issue
As you can hopefully see the first frame of the square object uses blue light but the second turns on the IR. After that all framing uses the IR, you can also see the new odd framing lines that started after updating to 2.04.
There is a bit of a pause as I reset Lightburn, then I run the square engrave using the IR (untick laser 2) and after that it allows multiple frames using the blue light again.
Turning the laser off / on reverts to the behaviour at the beginning, 1st frame BL, subsequent frames IR.
Thank you Melvin for stepping in.
You said, you never had the issue with randomly changing the power of the framing laser?
This would indicate a hardware fault on Steve’s machine, but there were recent changes to the BSL libraries as well.
This won’t make a difference, because the Sculpfun G9 is using a BSL controller which uses another driver and device type.
For BSL devices, we have to use a proprietary library, and we don’t have full control over it. This led to issues in the past, and we rely on BSL to send us updated versions of the library.
This part is to be expected. When framing, the laser is constantly on, and not turning off during the “travel moves”.
You can see the effect of this in this section of our Galvo Framing video:
I’m not sure, we have a Sculpfun G9 in the team to thoroughly test this special case with the dual source. Usually, these Galvos have an extra red dot laser for the framing.
I’ve been doing some more tests to try and find any triggers for the switching between lasers for framing and discovered a second framing issue.
Hopefully these videos work:
So Issue 1 is the G9 switching to the IR laser (laser 1) for framing after initially using the Blue Light laser at low power for the first frame.
Excuse the shaky video but I made a simple demo of engraving a single small square:
So the first frame uses BL at low power but on the following frames it uses the IR laser at a higher power which marks the material.
After running the square using the IR laser (laser 1) I can then frame properly again using the BL at low power, even after running the square using the BL (laser 2) as a job.
I can’t find a certain trigger that starts this behaviour but once it starts it will do it consistently even after turning the machine on / off.
The second framing issue I’ve found is that if I stop a job before completing, it will then frame with the blue light at low power once but all following frames will use the BL at the power level set in the layer (think this was at 60%).
I believe this caused the changes in framing power as I haven’t seen that happen again outside of this second framing issue.
So there are some communication issues going on with the G9. I’m going to install the Sculpfun software again and see if that triggers the same issues. Its very basic though so hopefully I can get things working in lightburn.
Did you get a chance to try Sculpfun’s own software?
As far as I know, we don’t have a G9 in the team. If Sculpfun advertises this machine as LightBurn compatible, they should tell you how to use it exactly. I’m sure they tested it extensively.
I think there should be a machine in the team, the Sculpfun developer was working with them/him on the issues that were reported in the beginning. I thought most of them were solved, but it seems some are left.
Yes I installed the sculpfun software and all the laser functions work correctly with no framing issues.
Focusing also works correctly in their software after framing while in Lightburn you can only focus before framing as once you have framed or a run a job the dots won’t align again until you turn the laser off / on.
Problem is that the sculpfun software is extremely basic and pretty frustrating to use so I’d rather continue with Lightburn even though it has these issues. My current workaround is to just run a job using the IR laser (laser 1) first and after that it will frame with the blue light (laser 2) correctly until you turn it off and on again.
If you do have a machine in the team (or maybe Melvin if he has the time) perhaps try these tests:
Turn the laser on, focus and align the dots. Frame the job and focus again, do the dots align? If so run the job, focus and see if they still align.
Run a job using the blue light (laser 2) at say 80%, stop it before finishing. Wear safety glasses and frame again, does it now frame with the blue light at high power?
Melvin doesn’t get the issue with the IR laser coming on when framing (after framing once before normally with blue light at low power) and I don’t know what triggers it. If your machine does do it, try running a job with the IR laser and then see if the following frames go back to using the blue light at low power.
I’ve been able to replicate all of the issues you’ve mentioned (thanks for providing so much detail).
Unfortunately, I don’t have a timeline for a fix just yet, but I’ll make sure to update the support team when I do.
