I recently bought a LaserPecker 5 - I own an LP4, which I love. The LP5 was advertised as Lightburn compatible, which is why I bought it. It is not. Nor rotary, for one. Also, you have virtually no control over the fiber laser - you can set the power and speed, and that’s about it. If you want to use the fiber laser, you are stuck with the LP Design space which isn’t that bad, but has some serious shortcomings controlling the fiber laser - and it is a quite good fiber laser. Y’all need to crack down on folks saying their systems are Lightburn compatible when they are not. I’ve been burned before buying a laser system that used their own proprietary software and I resolved to never buy another system that was not lightburn compatible, but I was deceived into doing it again.
I don’t think this has nothing to do with Lightburn.
The vendor is claiming compatibility, not Lightburn, as far as I know. You should speak to the manufacturer/vendor about it. Most of these places have roots in China, it’s not like Lightburn has much control over them.
xTool and others have produced lasers that mostly work with Lightburn, but they have special features that are not supported by Lightburn as there is no standard.
You have more control than you think. Lightburn needs to publish a list of laser systems that are fully compatible with Lightburn, followed by a list of laser systems that are only partly compatible with Lightburn, with functions Lightburn does not support.
Systems which are fully compatible with Lightburn should be recommended for use with Lightburn, those with minimal or no compatibility should not be recommended for use with Lightburn.
A cease and desist letter should be sent to folks who advertise Lightburn compatibility but are not. A list of minimum requirements for compatibility should be established - this can be pretty basic - like compatibility with ALL of Lightburn’s control functions. Advertising Lightburn compatibility but not rotary or depth map (unless you use their proprietary software) is NOT compatibility.
I just ordered an xTool S1 40W, advertised as Lightburn compatible (I wanted more power, and a closed system) - I’ve been using an open frame Atomstack 20W which I have been quite happy with. I haven’t gotten the xTool S1 yet, so I don’t know what functions are not supported by Lightburn - I will find out this week. If I knew in advance what functions were not supported by Lightburn, I may have chosen to upgrade to another system - I have a plethora of Lightburn files of things I make. If the xTool S1 cannot load and run these files, I’ll have to try and send it back and buy something else. I would have not bought a LP5 if I had known that the Lightburn compatibility was virtually non-existent.
I think I’m very realistic.
You want Lightburn to continuously search the Internet and find an occurrence of Lightburn compatibility.
When found, purchase a machine with all it’s options and test it to see if it operates everything correctly.
If it fails, engage an attorney to send letters to companies in China…
You issue is with Laser Pecker not Lightburn.
Any of these that are not standard gcode may not be supported with that option… xTool has a co2 that follow the shape of spoons and such, but isn’t operable from Lightburn. They claim it’s Lightburn compatible.
Hope they take it back from you.
Good luck
You’re right about this. It’s not at a point where I can talk about it, but I can say there is a plan and it’s moving forward.
Our Engineering Director @adammhaile has an LP5 on hand. The compatibility issue is currently being addressed.
LB 2.0 will have better support but not full. Their rotary works in a weird way and there’s not a ton we can do about that at this point. But controlling both lasers actually works and you can make macros for the various other features. I’ve sent them an lbdev (LightBurn Device Profile) file with what I was able to make work.
We’re actually in the process of doing exactly this. I can’t give much more detail than that at this point, but we have a compatibility list with ratings that you’ll be able to check.
I would be most happy if I could get LP5’s fiber laser to engrave height mapped files from Lightburn. That is my biggest issue.
At present, no GCode-based galvos support this, because they don’t register in LightBurn as galvo devices, just as GCode devices. (I assume you’re referring to the “3D Sliced” image mode, which is galvo only)
Bummer. But, being stupid, after quite some time, I realized a simple solution to my problem. The LP5 software moves the laser closer to the item being engraved with 3d bit sliced image with each slice. This is great for very deep engravings, but for metal, the smallest increment able to be selected is way to large, and the laser goes out of focus after several slices. The LP5 people would not admit that this is a problem and told me to “engrave a softer material”. The simple solution is to unplug the electronic lift mechanism after the initial focus - a bit of a pain, but at least you can engrave a 3d slice image on metal
For all practical purposes, the xTool S1 is Lightburn compatible. Not only does autofocus work with Lightburn, the focus can be manually set in Lightburn in the cut settings - something I may start doing to save time. While you cannot control the exhaust fan timeout from Lightburn, it turns out that the exhaust fan timeout is in non-volatile memory so it can be set with xTool software and it will remain even when the machine is turned OFF and remain set when run with Lightburn.
I use Xtool S1 with Lightburn exclusively and have tested with Lightburn 2.0 rc5. I show the capabiliteis on my youtube channel.
I Love Lightburn with my Xtool S1..
Brian