I’m running LB 1.3.01 on a Desktop i7 PC, 16Gb RAM, machine. In the 2.5 years I’ve been running lightBurn my pc has been fast and responsive. Occasionally, usually following a LightBurn update, It runs a bit slow. Where I notice this most is clicking the preview button - it takes 5 secs to bring up the Preview window currently. My laptop that runs the laser is just an old i5 PC running LB 1.3.01 as well and the Preview window comes up almost instantaneously. Does anybody have any ideas why my desktop machine is slower? Would re-installing LightBurn help?
An update to the above problem… I’ve just upgraded my desktop PC to Windows 11. I wasn’t expecting that it would cure my ‘tardy preview window’ problem, and I was right not to get my hopes up! So it still takes a full 5 secs for the preview window to appear. By contrast, my old i5 laptop connected to the laser brings up the preview window almost instantly. All suggestions greatfully received
Does the Preview take 5 seconds irrespective of the complexity of the design?
When you compare Preview times between your two computers are you comparing like for like files?
Unlikely if it otherwise works correctly.
Can you upload a sample .lbrn file where this occurs?
Hi, thanks for your response.
The Preview seems to be independant of complexity, even a simple square takes 5 secs. I shot a video to demonstrate the issue, but it seems videos can’t be uploaded to this forum. Here’s the file
Preview 5sec Issue.lbrn2 (3.1 KB)
You could link to an external service for this.
I tested your file and I’d estimate it takes between 2 and 3 seconds for the Preview to appear. So not exactly fast. This is on a relatively current AMD based laptop.
I’d expect you to be at the same or better.
Your profile says you have a Ruida laser. How is it connected to your PC?
One of the things LightBurn does is checks to see if the design you’re trying to preview (or run) is within the bounds of your laser, and part of that is checking to see if you’re in rotary mode or not, so there’s a bit of interaction with the laser itself.
If you’re connected with Ethernet, and the laser is off, it can take some time for the connection to try to talk to the laser - this is because of how networking behaves - you send a message and it might take a couple seconds to get a reply in rare cases. If you change that to USB, the computer can tell that the USB isn’t connected, and the timeout will be nearly instant.
Try this:
- Run LightBurn
- Go to Help > Enable Debug Log (bottom of the menu)
- Open your file
- Click the preview button and wait for the preview to come up
- Quit LightBurn
You’ll find a file called LightBurnLog.txt in your Documents folder. Attach that here so I can have a look.
Hi Oz, my laser connects via ethernet to the laptop, but the PC that shows this problem is remote. I do all my design work remotely. I tried to do a debug log, but it just gives me an empty file. 0kb and nothing at all when I open it in Notebook.
Is the PC that you’re designing from ALSO set to connect to the laser via Ethernet? (and isn’t actually connected?) If so, that’s likely the issue.
As for the log file, did you quit LightBurn first? The file isn’t closed / finalized until you do.
Yes, it’s on the same network and in the Laser tab it knows the name and ip address of my laser. But it has for the last 2.5 years and this issue has only been obvious for the last few weeks. I think I have had it before, but it only lasted a day or so.
I follow the debug instructions, including closing LightBurn, and I get the same empty file. I find that I need to do more than a preview to get it to save data. Here’s a debug file where I opened the file, added a square and previewed it, added a circle, previewed it, added a polygon and closed it.
LightBurnLog.txt (12.3 KB)
Yup - it’s because the laser is off, and it’s checking to see if the rotary is enabled:
21:31:11.297 D: EnableZ: false Relative: false
21:31:11.449 D: Sending initial test query << first attempt to communicate with the laser
21:31:11.449 D: O: “01614c11956f”
21:31:12.450 D: Checking key 8
21:31:12.450 D: O: “01614c11956f”
21:31:13.451 D: Checking key 9
21:31:13.451 D: O: “01a16439bd47”
21:31:14.453 D: Checking key 10
21:31:14.453 D: O: “01a32f76f20c”
21:31:15.468 D: 1 floaters << gives up here
21:31:15.468 D: PathTree build: 0
If you change the connection type to serial/USB instead of networked, or just create a copy of the device profile to use for designing and just change that one, it’ll be snappy again.
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Thanks Oz. I changed the connection type to USB and it’s back to being a ‘near-instant preview’. Interestingly it has improved the ‘file open’ time as well. That was about 4 secs as well but is now also ‘near instant’. Much appreciated.
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