Lightburn laser control issue with WeCreat Vista

Hello,
I am new to lightburn, and I have a question about controlling the laser via the following setup:

Lightburn ver 1.7.03 for Mac (trial mode)
Wecreat vista (still in 30 day trial)
Macbook pro:
Chio: Apple M1 Pro
Mac O/S: Sequoia 15.31.1

I have downloaded and installed the wecreat vista GRBL / GCode file, and the vista machine is recognized by lightburn. (This product is not in the lightburn listing, nor the needed file). I have gone through all the documentation I can find, but when I try (as a simple test), to burn anything (verbiage or pictures) onto a flat piece of 3 to 5 mm wood (as a test), the laser seems to print off by about 2 or so inches, either left OR right of the targeted area…

1 To get the FOCUS function to work each time, I have to disconnect and reconnect the USB cable each time. As suggested via wecreat, I do focus with the lid up.

2 I then do FRAME, and the laser moves over the selected area on the wood as expected, some of the time. When it doesn’t, it may be an inch or 2 off, either left or right.

3 When FRAME is off target, I move the wood to the area that is within the FRAME area so it is lined up as desired. I press start, and the laser starts printing, but still an inch or two off to the left or right of where I moved the wood to, within the framed area. It does not print in the selected frame area that it went to… always an inch or two off, either left or right. *About 75% of the time, the Wecreat stops burning and sits idle after it starts for about a minute or so. I have to press stop and start again to complete the burn (but causes a deeper burn in the area it already started on as it starts over again).

4 I try setting the laser manually by using the set laser position icon on the left sidebar via the bottom left, right, and top areas of the wood to be printed, and the laser goes to the exact and expected locations. But again when actually printing, the wecreat laser continues to be off by a few inches, it does not start where the target lines were.

I have tried the focus test, but doesn’t seem to do anything.

I tried contacting wecreat who says lightburn is fully compatible, but they told me to contact lightburn. The wecreat software does print in the correct area but is very basic. I would prefer to use lightburn (still in the 30 day trial).

In the lightburn documentation, I’ve tried the console command codes to get suggested information about laser control, but I don’t know what the responses mean. I have looked at all the settings in device settings that I can think of and suggested via lightburn documentation. Is there a Z control setting or other setting I am missing? It seems it should not be this difficult to burn a simple picture on a piece of wood where you want it to go.

Could you please reply in a timely manner with any suggestions? If I can’t get this working to continue with more advanced projects in a few days, I may have to return everything as I am getting quite frustrated and close to the end of my wecreat trial time. Thank you for any help you can provide…

Check if this gives you a start point:

Hi @Daryl13

Regarding your disconnect/reconnect issue, does your Macbook only have USB3 ports by chance? I have been able to just about prove that the WeCreat machines don’t work reliably on USB3 but if I drop back to a laptop with USB2 ports it works almost flawless.

Also the camera they use is way off once you get off center. At least that’s the case on my Vision and I assume is probably similar on the Vista.

For the framing, I’m guessing there should be an offset set, but I can’t compare the Vista 10w laser to the 40w Vision laser head as they are different sizes. Are you framing using the actual laser (laser on at like 1%) or are you trying to frame with the red focus laser? There is a tutorial out there for setting up a framing offset but I’d have to dig it up. Basically you can setup a test burn, then move your framing laser so that it overlaps the test burn and then run the job again. Then measure the offset for X and Y and you can enter it in the settings.

Hopefully that helps a bit.

Turn off the laser pointer in device settings… I could never get that to work right.

Also, if you enable the fire laser button and enable fire while framing, you have to click the fire button first, then shift-click the frame button for it to work without getting stuck processing.