Hi all, I’m pretty new to the laser world and have had an on-and-off issue with Lightburn when used with my Cohesion3D Laser Board (Smoothieware) installed in an OMTech k40. I run on 2018 Mac (Latest OS) right now but have had issues on earlier versions as well. My laser powers on fine, and I can manually pulse the laser on my K40. I checked the smootieboard troubleshooting, and tested the board with everything unplugged and the LED’s indicate normal operation - no errors. I also have replaced the factory Blue USP cable with an Amazon Basics cable. I have correctly setup my smoothie board with Lightburn and have had a number of successful cuts with no issue.
HOWEVER. Periodically, when I turn on my laser and connect to my Mac, LB will say it is connected fine, but when I try to jog, home, or run the project, nothing happens. When this has happened in the past I just shut everything down and try another day, and it feels 50/50 whether it works or not. When it works, it works great! I feel like I must be missing something silly, but this has been a VERY frustrating experience, and none off my google/forum searches have yielded a solution.
Manually select the actual proper port for your laser.
If you turn on your laser prior to opening LightBurn it should connect to the same port as previously but that’s not necessarily always the case either for various reasons.
This definitely seems like it would be the solution! How do I found out the actual port? and how do I select it? This is where we are getting way over my head
Screenshots of my USB Device tree and of my options on Lightburn:
Thats what I thought as well, but console says port failed to open? I don’t have anything open on this Mac but LB, Safari, and Finder, so IDK what is blocking the connection?
Numbers don’t matter because when LightBurn was started again the OS assigned a new PID to it.
It’s a bit of a head scratcher. Do you have another USB cable that you could try? Are you connected directly from computer to laser? Or do you have a hub in the middle?
Tried the factory blue cable, Amazon basics cable that I bought to replace crappy factory cable, and then a random USB cable I found while digging today. Going through a USB hub/adaptor as my Mac is USB-C and needs to connect to the 2.0 cable. However, I have the same issue on an older Mac with the standard type-A where I can plug the cable in directly, so I don’t think it is the adapter.
I’ll also repeat that I have had success cutting with this setup, but for reasons I can’t explain it sometimes just DOESNT. LOL
To be clear, hubs can at times cause issues. Not clear if it’s the issue in this case obviously. Do you have a dedicated USB->C to USB->A female adapter that’s not a hub that you can try?
I’ve heard of some people having problems with USB-C ports in general. Those I think are typically where it’s a USB-C to USB-C on the laser. Oddly enough, adding a hub has been the answer in those scenarios.
Not sure what else to try, you may want to consider rebooting and possibly resetting the SMC on the Mac.
ugh. Tried running the same code on the console of my older Mac that connects directly without a port, and had the same code back. Tried another hub I use for my iPad, and same results as well. Tried a reboot, and noting. Will an SMC reboot hurt any other programs/etc on my laptop?
It shouldn’t and is widely done but it’s still a computer so I’m sure there are cases where this has caused issues. It’s not generally considered a risky step. Having said that, I’ve done this many times without issue across multiple computers. Read more about it to determine your comfort level.
