Laser seems to be jerking across piece

My laser was working fine and now it seems to be jerking as it goes back and forth when I am using it. It even sometimes stops and then starts suddenly. Any help would be appreciated. I am using it with XCARVE and like I said before it never had any problems. This started last weekend. thanks.

Is it possibly moving faster over the white or non burnt areas and seems to be jerky. Also are you running any other programs on your pc when you are using lightburn?

Similar to this? This ended up being dirty ball bearings:

yes, it seems to be jerking over the white portions and yes I am running some programs in the background. However, I was running the same programs in the background before it started jerking and stopping. AT first I thought Windows was the issue so I upgraded to ver 2004 and it is still doing the jerking.

I see the jerking once in a while if i switch programs while running the laser and it will stop at times and restart right away when doing such. You may try shuting everything down but lightburn and see if it still does it.

Thanks I will shut down everything and see what happens

It is worth a shot.

What is it that you’re engraving? Do you have ‘Laser Mode’ ($32=1) enabled? If not, the laser will stop at every power change. If you’re engraving an image, X-Carve uses an 8-bit controller that isn’t very fast.

Processing outline shapes is fine, but photos use a lot of gcode, and the controller could struggle to keep up if you’re going faster than about 30mm/sec. (1800 mm/min)