I’m having a slow connection issue with my new Macbook Air M3 and am not sure where to look.
I have an older OMTech 50w laser with a Ruida 644XG controller. My older Intel Macbook Pro (with Thunderbolt USB-C) and my wife’s M1 Macbook Air connect wtihout issue. I’m running MacOS 15.2 and LB 1.7.04. I have a USB-A cable connected to a USB-A to USB-C apapter.
When I launch LB (with the laser switched ON) there is a significant delay in loading the app. I presume it’s looking for the controller. It finds it and launches as expected. When I go into the Move commands, the commands are delayed around .5-1 second. When I send a job to the cutter, it says the cutter is busy and will not send. When I saw the issue, we plugged my wife’s M1 in and were able to run without issue.
I’m not sure where to look to sort this out. Hoping someone can give me some direction. Strange bit is it works with no problem on my older Intel MBPro and my wife’s M1 Air.
I have a M1 Mini and Macbook Pro M3. The Mini is my main design computer out in the shop and the Macbook is in the house which I use for some design work. I too have noticed that Lightburn is kind of slow to load and perform some operations. I also have a Windows 10 PC connected to a diode laser and it seems to load Lightburn significantly faster. I do, however have my files, art library and materials libraries stored on a NAS drive and figure that is the reason for the slowness loading.
Many have found connection problems with Mac and their laser to be an issue with how MacOS translates, or rather doesn’t translate the onboard USB 3+ to the USB 2.0 of the laser. The most common solution seems to be using a "dumb: USB 2.0 hub connected though a Lightning adapter. Faulty, cheap USB cables are another source of problem for Mac and PC users alike. I don’t think the cable is your issue since it works on other machines, but I would try a cheap hub.
Thanks for the suggestions and the links. I went down the rabbit hole and decided to connect my mac via ethernet as all of the suggestions with Mac and especially the recent updates pushed me this way. Good news is I’m able to connect my M3 mac and my wife’s M1 without issue and with much faster transfer speeds (2x over USB).
I decided to directly connect my mac through ethernet vs. a router (I don’t have an extra and a wired ethernet to the cutter isn’t an issue for me.
Here are a few tips when doing this if you don’t want to use a router. (I’m no networking expert by any means, so if these don’w work, there are many others on the forum that can help…and Google of course )
For a new Mac (USB-C or Thunderbolt), you’ll need a USB-C to Ethernet adapter. I bought a cheap one on Amazon a few years back that worked without issue.
Plug the ethernet into the Ethernet port on the cutter and using the adapter, plug into a free port on the Mac.
Go into Settings/Network and select the adapter. Mine showed up as USB100T/1000T Lan.
At the cutter, find the IP address and make a note of this.
I changed my IP address to a completely different IP scheme than my home network. On the controller, I set the IP and Gateway to 10.0.3.3. Reset the controller.
On the Mac, select the ethernet and click details.
Select TCP/IP and change the IPV4 to Manually. Put in an IP address with the same scheme 10.0.3.x (don’t use the same IP as the cutter). Set the Subnet to 255.255.255.0 and the Router to 10.0.3.3 (same as the cutter).
Click OK.
If you use Wifi to connect to the internet, you’ll need to change the network order so the Wifi connects first, then the ethernet. On the main network page, click the three dots at the bottom of the network choices and select “Set Service Order”. Reorder the connections so the wifi is first and the ethernet is somehwere below. This should give you internet access and access to the cutter.
Open the Terminal app on your mac (use spotlight to find it). type “ping 10.0.3.3” (no quotes and the IP address of the cutter). It should show a reply. If so, go into LB.
Make a new device (or export your current one and edit it)
Select the Ruida controller and plug in the IP address of the controller, go through the usual steps and it should connect.
Note: you may need to go into Settings/Privacy & Security/Local Network and make sure Lightburn has permission to see the local network.
Hopefully this helps.
PS- I have a monitor with multiple USB-C connections. I’m actually running this config through my monitor connections so it will work through a hub or directly on the mac usb connections.
Good luck. Sorry I didn’t have time for screen shots. I’ll try to answer any questions I can, but as I mentioned, I’m not a network expert.
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