LightBurn compatible with RepRap? (DuetWifi)

Hello World,

I am sourcing parts for a DIY lasercutter I am building. I have already decided to use LightBurn as software because I could not find a rival that performed better. However, one of the last decisions to make is the control board:
My 3d printer has a Duet2Wifi board, and it is truly fantastic. It however runs RepRap firmware, which has some slight variations in the G-code interpretation. (https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code)

My questions:

  • Is the LightBurn software compatible with RepRap?
  • Or don’t the slight variations in G-code cause any issues, and can I generate “Marlin” Gcodes without issues.

Thank you all in advance.

Marlin based firmware is pretty bad for laser use. They interpret G0 and G1 moves identically, whereas all other modern firmware treats G0 as a non-cutting rapid move. This means that, for a dithered picture, GRBL would use this to draw two evenly spaced dots:
G0 X0.1
G1 X0.1
G0 X0.1
G1 X0.1

And Marlin would use this:
G0 X0.1
M106 S255
G1 X0.1
M107
G0 X0.1
M106 S255
G1 X0.1
M107

And that’s assuming that you don’t want the G0’s to go faster. If you do, now you need to include feed speed with every G command too. It’s horribly verbose, so if you plan to do any image engraving you will be quite limited.

It also doesn’t do velocity based power, so surface marking of vector shapes will have burnt corners, unlike Smoothieware or GRBL.

LightBurn does support Marlin 1.1.9, but not through Ethernet, and I’ve never tested with a Duet board. It’s been on my list to try, as I know the devs have talked about adding laser support and addressing at least some of the above, but they seem pretty focused on 3DP support.