Hello, I just bought a JPT M7-based laser from Scotle. It has a G3 Pro head and is EZCAD3.
I tested the machine with EZCAD3 first and ensured it was working, but wanted to get it working with LightBurn on Mac (LightBurn Pro 2.1.04).
I set up the device and imported the various config and correction files as per the steps.
First oddity/potential problem noticed: after framing, the red laser stays in whatever position it was in and doesn’t return to origin after a short pause like it does in EZCAD3.
I tried doing a test grid, but I’m not sure if it ever did anything. There’s possibly a really faint test grid, but it’s hard to be sure. Tried multiple times, even swapping to some black anodised material to try and make it easy to spot. The laser just wasn’t firing.
I swapped back to EZCAD3 on the original Windows machine and couldn’t get the laser to fire. Spent half a day trying various things. Eventually installed LightBurn for Windows and saw that it offered an EZCAD2/3 driver, which I let it install. Still no laser output.
I tried EZCAD3 again and noticed it no longer recognised the controller and reported an error. Checked Device Manager and saw there was now a LightBurn-prefixed device and no JCZ one. Uninstalled the LightBurn one and rebooted again. The JCZ one showed up again, EZCAD3 stopped complaining, and, to my surprise and relief, I could get the source to fire again.
I would still like to try LightBurn for Mac, but I’m getting the feeling something is currently causing it to make my source lock up in some odd way (plus the framing weirdness). I’ve tried searching but don’t see anyone talking about this, so wondered if anyone has encountered this?
Lightburn does not use any of the EZCAD drivers. This is above my pay grade, but I am sure it has to be ezcad ot Lightburn exclusively. Lightburn will support a controller that can run EZCAD2, but I do not think EZCAD3 controllers are ready yet.
Thank you. Just to clarify, I’m specifically using the EZCAD3 support in LightBurn 2.1.04 on Mac, which I understand is currently a Labs feature.
Apologies I wasn’t clear I’m trying to establish whether what I’ve experienced is a bug in the EZCAD3 support or something I’ve configured incorrectly. I am aware the drivers are different, the mentioning of drivers was just because it covered the steps I made before I got the laser working again.
The framing behaviour is the first obvious oddity: EZCAD3 returns the red aiming point to centre after framing, whereas LightBurn leaves it wherever the galvo mirrors happen to finish. This feels like a candidate for a config issue, but could be a bug.
The subsequent loss of laser output is the more worrying part, because after switching back to EZCAD3 on the original Windows machine, the source still wouldn’t fire. That happened before I installed LightBurn on Windows and its driver, so I don’t think the Windows driver issue explains that part.
I’m mainly hoping someone familiar with the EZCAD3 Labs implementation can say whether any of this sounds like a known issue or a configuration problem.
Sorry, as people keep missing this, I think I need to make the chronology clearer.
Day 1: Laser tested with EZCAD3 on Windows and confirmed working.
Day 2 morning: Laser used with LightBurn on Mac. Same focus, same material and the same settings that had worked in EZCAD3. Framing worked, apart from the framing/rest-position issue, but the laser did not fire.
Day 2 afternoon: Switched back to EZCAD3 on Windows. The laser still did not fire, although framing worked.
Day 2 evening: Installed LightBurn on the Windows machine to see if it provided any additional debugging information. This installed the LightBurn driver. I then discovered the EZCAD3/LightBurn drivers were incompatible: EZCAD3 no longer saw the controller. I removed the LightBurn device, rebooted, and the JCZ device appeared again. EZCAD3 then recognised the controller and, unexpectedly, the laser fired again.
So 100% the laser was not firing during the entire period before I did the driver switching. It is working again now, so I’m not accusing LightBurn of breaking the machine. I’m just wondering whether the Mac LightBurn session left the laser/controller in some unusual state, and whether the driver switching on Windows happened to reset/clear that state.
For completeness:
Lens cap was definitely off throughout. The framing light has to pass through the lens, so that was always obvious.
The settings weren’t too low — they were the same settings as the previous known-good EZCAD3 configuration.
Focus was unchanged.
I used the same piece of material, until I eventually switched to a piece of black anodised aluminium to make the result easier to see.
None of those parameters changed when the laser started working again.
So I’m mainly trying to understand whether there is something LightBurn/EZCAD3-specific that could leave the source in this state, or whether there is a configuration issue I haven’t understood yet.
I did also try setting a small Rest Position offset while investigating the framing issue (changed from X0,Y0 to X0.1,Y0.1), but it didn’t change the behaviour. I’m happy to try the specific X10/Y10 test you suggested, although given that the laser is working again I’d prefer to first establish whether there is any particular information you’d like me to capture in case the no-fire state occurs again.
Thanks for listing the exact timeline and confirming the obvious things with focus, lens cap, and settings.
That could be a plausible explanation. However, a reset of the controller should’ve also sorted this.
It’s unlikely that the driver installation directly fixed it, because drivers don’t actually change anything on the device itself.
So, the laser never fired with LightBurn!
This is where we should pick up.
One last question before we go further into the weeds:
When you click “Frame”, does the status in the “Laser” window here correctly change to “Framing”, and then “Busy” or “running” when you click start in that window?
When you loaded the manufacturer’s config files (MarkCfg0, Motors.ini, and COR file) we parse them to set the correct device settings. It is possible that some settings were not assigned correctly.
I’d like to forward this to a dev for investigation.
Can you send us the config files, and your Device Settings by exporting a bundle?
(A download link to a drive, or email to support@lightburnsoftware.com would work.)
If you can paste a link to a listing page of your machine where we can see the exact laser source and galvo head that would also be of help.
You are already past any help I can provide. I expect a Labs version on a Fiber will be a limited audience. Hopefully one of the developers can jump in.
So I went back to check things, live framing window opens, and I was actually able to laser a few things without it breaking, even tried stopping a test grid mid way to see if that got it into the odd state again but it behaved normally.
The red indicator still never centres no matter what I tried putting for the X/Y rest position, it always stops in a position somewhere along what it was tracing. If fire a job and it completes it goes back to tracing the outline.
When you create a device for Lightburn, you load the controller information, via the mark7cfg file. This may be a different file name for EZCad3, but it needs to be configured. When you switch to the device, it again, loads the configuration that you told it to use.
Mine returns to the center, directly under the beam, using Lightburn on my galvo.
As far as I’ve been told, the home location or 0,0 is front left, mine goes back to where it started. I believe my visible light led is within the fiber source.
What I’m saying is the control board is loaded by each piece of software, either EZCad3 or Lightburn loads the controller configuration, there is no default state, that I know of.
Happy to hear that it’s working now! So, you didn’t change anything else?
I see, that you use the “200mm” device, the one with the settings straight from the config files.
Did you change anything else on this device profile, after loading the config files?
(You probably enabled the Q-Pulse setting, because this didn’t get set correctly from the config file. We’re looking into this.)
Thanks for your report. I’ll run some tests about the red dot not recentering after framing.
So its been working fine with 200 profile now, I tried with the 300 profile and had some weird ness, lightburn itself locked up twice and crashed once. This might be really stupid user error for example I turn off the laser, galvo and main board switch (in that order) I notice this generates a laser temp error. If i change profiles it sometimes locks up or crashes.
As long as I don’t switch the laser off with lightburn running it seems fine, tried a bunch of other stuff like turning Q-Pulse setting “MO enabled ONLY when running” turning homing on and off (homing itself doesn’t seem to work, but I guess that’s to be expected) jogging Z and not once have I managed to repeat the lockup of the laser that persists between closing lightburn.
So I’m feeling good and its just the framing issue
If LightBurn crashes, you should get a “LightBurn_Crash_Log.txt” file stored on the Desktop. If you see that, please send it to us with an explanation of the steps that led to the crash, so we can investigate.
Your JPT YDFLP-E3-300-M7-M-R is a MOPA source, so it should definitely have the “Q-Pulse Width Setting” enabled in Device Settings. Otherwise, you don’t get this in the Cut Settings:
Does anything happen if you click “Home” here?
You change it to a different Axis (there are 6 options), and tweak the “Homing Direction” and “Homing Limit Active”
The “issue” being that the red dot laser doesn’t return to the center after framing?
To be sure: Did you exit the framing window? At least, on connecting to the controller, the red dot should be centered.
Apologies I realise what I wrote was ambiguous.
Q-Pulse Width Setting - No problems
MO enabled ONLY when running - No problems
Jogging up and down - no probelms
Home with various different settings no movement of the Z at all
I failed to find any crash logs, but I will send a video direct to you showing all of this (apologies its a bit long as i tried a few different things but it shows you what I was doing so feel free to point out if its user error)
And yes sorry the issue was just the red dot, but I can work around that for the moment.
Thanks for the confirmation. Good to hear that the Z-Axis moved with the jog buttons.
Does your home axis have physical limit switches?
On one of our machines, that’s just a regular switch mounted on the collumn, that gets triggered then the way up
For example: if the endstop switch is “Active High” (electrically closed when triggered) the above settings would tell LightBurn that the switch is closed when it’s open.
Hope, that makes sense
Even if it turns out to be user error, I’d like to find out! That gives us a chance to help others avoid the same issue. Looking forward to seeing your video.
I have one of those cheap chinese non contact sensors I think, not actually checked which type it is but tried a few different settings in the homing stuff
I’ll just post the video here as it looks like i failed to send it direct.
first 4 minutes are basically me messing around with the framing
I believe i then do a restart of the laser to reset the galvo and start messing with the jog and z home stuff
about 6 minutes in i actually start trying various combinations of the home settings
and at 6:40 change profile a couple of times and lock up lightburn
Apologies there’s a couple of non light burn things I commented on there, such as my realisation that the framing/focus when using the 300mm lens is going to be completely wrong if I follow the standard convergence of the two laser dots (no idea how that’s meant to work other then presumably some offset added to the profile?) and a bit of waffle at the end because I was actually happy enough to buy the full version as you’ve been so helpful and its working with a few work arounds.
That’s genuinely helpful. You didn’t do anything stupid
The red dot not returning to the rest position is a bug. I haven’t seen that on our machine. (Using a similar-looking galvo head with the integrated controller.)
I’ve created a report.
I relayed the info to our devs. We’re looking for possible reasons why the homing sequence doesn’t do anything.
From another glance at the Motors.ini, [MOTOR3] doesn’t have the variables m_bEnableLimit and m_bEnableHome enabled. Those are the values we read to set the correct options.
Can you confirm that you got this “Motors.ini” file directly from the EZ3 application folder? That should be in the “PARAM” folder next to the EZ3 executable that you run where homing worked.
Usually, the stationary red dot is mounted next to the lens and needs to be adjusted to converge with the other dot at the focal distance. This one has two with set screws:
