First thank you for taking time to click and hopefully helping me.
I’m a total newbie to lasers.
Hope I’m posting in the correct place.
Im running a clean windows 10 home HP w/SSD machine
The laser machine is Atomstack P7 M30
Device settings say Im running GRBL-30
(I read in a help thread it should be just GRBL but I see no other option.)
I started a few days ago reading the forums and watched the get started videos.
Download the included program and driver.
Downloaded lightburn.
To get started I connected everything. Lightburn found the machine and I started repeat the interface video and following along.
The laser will not move when trying the steps outlined in that getting started interface video.
It does nothing when Jogging, Home or Frame.
I do have an image in the workspace so I went and clicked start and the laser just sits in one spot burning a hole.
Ive spent all day trying to trouble shoot reading the forum and docs.
Ive checked the belts and connections on the machine.
I’m sure I’ve thoroughly screwed up all the setting.
I took a bunch of screenshots and Included a lot of error codes in a notepad doc.
From what I see in the errors the Y and X are locked. When I went through setting after reading the error code i did click on several X and Y settings so who knows whats going on now.
I’m really frustrated and need help.
The error messages could stem from a purely mechanical cause.
Do the motors make noise like they’re trying to move. Does the little gear on the motor shaft turn with the motor and mesh nicely with the teeth on the belt?
Does the laser head move along the belts in any direction when pushed with one finger? If the mechanism is hard to move it can stall the motors. It should not need a serious shove.
Cautiously check if the motors are hot… Careful… they may be well above the boiling point — HOT!!.
The 6000 mm/min in the Move window might be a little ambitious for troubleshooting…
Lowering the Move speed and your engrave speed to 600 mm/minute may help you hear or see something mechanical that’s not quite right.
In your move window it says 6000 and 200.
6000 is the speed and 200 is distance per pulse (on the arrows, on my machine) set it to 10mm to start with and adjust it as needed. The speed, in general I always want to start moderately with a machine I don’t know, there is no need to rush.
In the laser window, I want to mark “cut selected…”, so you always know that only what you decide will be lasered.
Thanks for responding!’
The belts do seem a little tight but everything moves when pushing with 1 finger.
Absolutely no noises except the fan. No attempting to move itself.
Its almost like the laser isn’t talking to the software for certain functions, but the laser did fire just no movement or attempted movement.
Ive adjusted the speed up and down several times. What your seeing was just what it was set up at the time of the screenshot.
Speeds at 600 now.
No matter what I change those setting to the laser will not home, frame or move.
Im at the very beginning of the set up process layed out here First time users - welcome!.
I did try the included software.
It says denied access to COM Port COM3
My CPU says the device is connected to COM3
I actually learned how to build websites after a bad injury in 2005 from forums. Took me a month to learn what a FTP was. I cant do that here though.
Im going to inspect the machine again and try figure out comport denial is all about.
The laser is the cheapest one on purpose. $200 is better than $2k when possibility of a wall toss is involved.
You might double check your cabling. The author of this video found a cable connected to the wrong port on the controller board from the manufacturer. It’s also unclear to me if the device has homing switches which could be the cause of the Alarm 9 your seeing if it doesn’t.
You may not have the correct machine profile loaded in LightBurn. However, as I do not know enough about your machine, it is only a guess and I hope that someone with the same machine jumps in here and clarifies this question.
Thanks lots for this. That cable was a issue for me and one other one wasn’t seated.
I’m still having some issues but cant get into it now. I shut down my shop for the day and Im burnt on this for today.
I really appreciate everyone’s help and Ill update you all tomorrow…
Perhaps we should rename the thread to “Magpies Laser Folly”.
So what I did was go through all the trouble shooting you guys lead me to. I found that a couple cables were not seated or entirely disconnect. What a dope.
That said the next day I thought ide go out to the shop and everything would work. Not so. I still had all the same issues and error msgs but now LB wouldn’t connect the the laser.
So I closed Lightburn down and started GRBL. Still had issues connecting to port and now it also wouldn’t connect…
So what I did was completely removed GRBL and its drivers. I then went to device manager and removed the machine from the USB Port. Then I moved the USB connection to another USB Port in device manager. In turn that changed the com-port to 4 from 3 and baud rate to 115200 (which is different from what device manager says baud rate is).
I then reinstalled GRBL drivers and turned on the machine and bam it homed. I imported a project and burned it with some success.
I closed down GRBL and open LB. In LB I had the same connection issue but resolved it after changing Comport and Baud rate.
After some further fiddling LB connected and homed, jogged, framed etc.
So I have a functioning machine now but with caveats.
I think one of my issues is I have to disconnect my cpu multiple times throughout the day. Its probably getting confused about which devices are plugged into the USB ports. Clearing the ports of devices seemed to help.
Hoping when I go to the shop this morning everything works as it did at the end of yesterday.
It seems as the the topic of this thread is solved but Id like to ask a few more questions before moving on.
Please include links to docs and video if you can for these issues.
I’m adult ADD.
1- I’ve messed with so many settings trouble shooting I’ve lost my place in the set up process.
Is there any kind of default reset or should I go through all the LB settings 1 by 1?
2- Since this cheap machine has no limit stops its getting stuck in the home X-Y. I have to manually move it out of home and over the material. I understand “job origin” and “Home” are different but my mind cant wrap around the concept.
So its probably best for me to just tell you what I’m trying to accomplish. I want the laser to always be on center of the work area which is only 200x200. I want to mount the machine, mark center and create a grid/template I can center material on.
I uploaded images of my tests. The 2 cards on the left are from GRBL burns (which has dropdown of material settings from Atomstack). Best burn so IMO.
The others are LB which the setting were way out of whack. The large .25 plywood I didn’t have secured and moved around. I was able to dial in speed and power on it a bit though.
Well thanks so much for your help and please send me links that may help. I have a ton of other question off topic of this category. I use to run forums so I understand how particular people get about off topic or wrong category so ill leave it here.
