Just bought a new Comgrow (Comgo Z1 5Watt), got it assembled, hooked to computer downloaded and installed Lightburn, windows 10, put a small picture in Lightburn, put a piece of wood under the laser, clicked the start button, laser fires and makes all the correct passes over the wood, but there is nothing burned into the wood. No marks at all. I can see the red light through the red lens and I can see blue flashes reflecting off my computer behind it, so I know the laser is on , but maybe there’s some way to control the power? I was really hoping this was a plug and play toy, but so far no go.
You laser is a 5 watt. You should start by running tests.
Would be nice if they were easy. Ain’t agonna happen. Many hours of trying settings, different material, and insane patience. When you finally get it right you will be amazed.
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Thanks for the file but I don’t know how to run it. Where do I put it? I’m brand new to this CNC type of thing and I really thought you just plugged in the computer, ran a laser program, added a picture to the program, pressed “start” and it printed the picture (burned). There’s really no reason in this day and age of computers that’s not the way it works. I don’t mind fiddling around for hours, but it’s sure a lot more difficult that it needs to be.
That’s very discouraging. In this day and age of computers we expect things to just work when you plug them in and the software is set up for one job only… burning with a laser machine. How difficult could that be? I don’t mind searching for awhile for answers, but everybody has to start somewhere. If it’s not intuitive or logical, it becomes frustration. And of course I can just return the whole thing and be shed of the problem, but I’d really like to see it work. Everyone on here ran one of these for the first time at some point. You’d think someone would have a “start here” bit of advice, after all, you all had to get your laser going from scratch at some point. Maybe everyone else’s just worked when they turned it on?
I would recommend starting with the LightBurn documentation itself, it is extremely well written and with its instructions also a good starting point for installing one’s machine correctly.
Then, and, or in parallel, I will watch the many fine videos on youtube, starting with LightBurn`s own series of simple and basic tasks.
But, you also need to consider whether it is the right toy for you or not. If you do not like to learn, are not computer minded or just do not have the time needed, then you should drop it.
I compare it to the advanced knitting and sewing machines available today, I am fascinated by what they can be used for and how they work, but I do not have the time and desire to get serious about this topic. So I buy my sweaters 
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I’m very computer familiar. IT for many years and apple computer guru. But I tried lasergrbl running windows natively on my mac computer and can’t get it to connect. Com3 is the only option. and with Lightburn I can get it run perfectly, but no burning of the wood, just the laser coming on when it’s supposed to and the laser moves over the wood just fine, but I can’t find any way to set the laser power higher. I do a lot of very intricate things on computers, but have never run a CNC machine and this is getting frustrating.
Ok, then it should probably succeed for you. I wonder if someone with the same setup as yours comes up with a good suggestion.
I suggest you take a step back and relieve yourself of preconceptions or else you’ll just end up being more frustrated. The very concept of CNC until very recently had been relegated to ultra expensive machines in industrial settings and are now available for $300 for home use. That’s an incredible advancement.
The fact that you got your laser put together, software installed, and a burn started in itself I would say is fairly plug and play in terms of getting going. You’re now in the realm of having to learn the skills of the trade. The reason why there’s a lot of futzing about is because the number of variables is so high when burning. Not only are there are a ton of variables in the tools (e.g. laser module, laser frame, ventilation, air assist, etc.) you’re often working with real-world materials like wood that are not uniform that require familiarity and adjustment.
Right now the state-of-the-art of home lasering is closer to 3d printing than word processing and printing.
If you genuinely want more of a curated process there are laser systems that cater to that. They do this by dramatically simplifying choices, reducing variables, and charging you for it. Systems like GlowForge offer you a closed system with cloud only software and branded material with identity tags scanned by the system, and accessories that are designed to fit together relatively easily at a premium cost. This makes it much closer to craft cutters like Cricut. What you gain in ease of startup, however, you lose in flexibility and may then get frustrated at the limitations.
Having said that, let’s get you going and you can determine what side of the hobby you want to move toward.
There are really only 3 main variables you need to really need to understand to get going. There are a bunch of things beyond that but the most critical are:
- focus - you’re dealing with a relatively lower powered laser. You need to learn the right focusing procedure for your system. The actual focus quality is surprisingly important from a beginner’s perspective. Check your manual to understand how it’s done for yours but this is typically done with either a dial for variable focus lasers or by using a spacer tool to set the distance of the laser to the work material for fixed focus lasers. There are ways of further fine-tuning this but that can come later.
- Speed - the slower you work through a material the more burning it will do in that spot. This is determined a lot by the power of your laser and the material that you’re working with.
- Laser power - power settings are going to be determined by the base strength of your laser as well as work material. There is a close relationship between laser power and speed as there’s a tradeoff of moving slower or adding power.
Most of the experimenting that you’ll need to do is going to be in getting familiar with what power/speed settings work with certain materials which is why @LaserWillie suggested the test pattern. It’s designed to run the various speed and power settings to see how your particular laser performs against the particular material. That way you can look at the results and determine what settings are appropriate.
However, in order to do that you need to get familiar with the software. In terms of intuitiveness and ease of use for a highly flexible and power program LightBurn is right now at the top. There are other programs that might be “easier” like the GlowForge cloud system but not as flexible or powerful.
@bernd.dk suggestion that the documentation is quite good is spot on. However, it is extremely dense and to the point. There are very few throwaway lines in it so you may find yourself going back to it later and finding that you’re understanding more in it than you did the first pass as your knowledge increases.
One thing to be aware of is that basically every tool or button on-screen in LightBurn has a good tooltip associated with it. You can see that by hovering your mouse over that UI element. These are surprisingly useful and sometimes essential to understand how something works.
Read through the Beginner Walkthrough as it will get you immediately familiar with the major sections of the program.
It’s a credit to the ease of use of the program that you were able to initiate a burn. Where you’re probably going to want to start is understanding the “Cut / Layers” window as that’s where you’ll find how to adjust speed/power for any particular layer.
You can double click on a layer to get even more details about the operation for that layer.
Again, try to take a step back, and enjoy the learning process. The initial hurdle is a one-time thing.
If you’d like feedback on a particular activity or challenge that you have bring that also to this forum.
For this particular issue, post a screenshot of what you’re doing and upload the saved project file (.lbrn) and we can offer guidance.
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By the way, it looks like Comgrow has some suggested power/speed settings on their marketing material. I’ve found these guides to be fairly optimistic in terms of their settings but gives you a relative idea of what’s nominal. Experimentation and testing will still be key.
The S value is the power setting.
The F value is the speed setting in what looks like mm/min.
From experience the speed numbers are likely going to be way too high for a 5W. You can try these values but I suspect they’ll have to come down by half.
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You must have lived a pretty sheltered ‘IT’ life. I remember many hours of dealing with soft/hardware that didn’t work ‘out of the box’. Some things don’t seem to change.
99% of the time it was not configured properly…
Sit down, have a cup of coffee and relax… 
Don’t take this as derogatory, we see many people startled at the complexity. However, non technical people make this stuff work…
I was a hardware software engineer and worked, at times, with cnc machines. There was a steep learning curve for me. They can definitely be ‘head’ trip…
I’m sure in a short period, you will be helping people here with their problems. 
Nice to know we’ll have a Mac expert available… 
This is the real truth…
You have stepped out of IT (tip of the iceberg) into another ‘3d’ world run by computers and dependent on supporting computer systems. You have a steep climb ahead, my friend…
Since you expect it to work ‘out of the box’ I assume you did not follow the common grbl setup from lightburn to ensure the basic software is configured properly.
It would be wise to go over Lightburn Coordinate and Job Origin documentation. With your background you should pick it up pretty quickly. However, don’t underestimate the required knowledge. If nothing else, the terminology used.
There are additive manufacturing (3d printing) and subtractive manufacturing, milling, lasing…
Both are dependent on ‘speeds and feeds’, speeds being your laser power (or in a milling machine the speed of the working spindle.) Feeds refer to how fast the material is moving against the ‘tool’ in a laser, it’s generally the head that is moving, but it’s all relative…
Every material and machine will have it’s idiosyncrasies and will have to be mastered to perform at it’s best. It might be a slight variance or a large one… but it will be different. Especially materials. Lightburn has a materials library mechanism allows you to store the cut/engrave parameters…
Hang in there and relax, it’s supposed to be a hobby, I’m assuming…
Take care, good luck.
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I got it figured out. Made a set of wooden earrings for my wife. Just gotta install the loops yet. By the way, it did work right out of the box (when I switched to my Mac and quit using Windows) with default Lightburn setup except for the power and speed. I adjusted those and went right to work. And @anon88048707 yes it’s 5 watts but it can still make cutouts on 1/6" and 1/8" wood. You can see a lot of YouTube videos showing 5 watt lasers making cutouts.
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Glad you’re up and running and curious if your wife is the motorcycle fan or you are.
What was different about your LightBurn experience on Mac vs Windows earlier? From what you indicated in your original post I thought you were up and running on Windows except for the power and speed settings. I’m wondering if I misunderstood where you were.
In general when you get a feel for the issues experienced by Windows and Mac you start to see certain major patterns:
- Mac issues with application install/running due to notarization requirements
- Mac issues with USB connectivity to Ruida controllers
- Mac issues with FTDI usb serial devices
- Mac issues with use of variations within font families
- Windows issues with camera
- Windows issues with driver install specifically for Windows 7 and 8; this seems almost entirely gone with Windows 10, 11
- Windows issues with low resolution displays
Linux is a slightly different beast with most hiccups related to basic installation but basically nothing after that. I think that might say more about Linux users but this is the least developed port of the software.
Overall, though, the user experience for both Mac and Windows users seems virtually the same which is a testament to the Dev team and the cross-platform UI toolkit.
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Wife and I both ride. The Moto Guzzi is mine, along with a garage full of other bikes.
I got the laser module to move around in Windows, but it didn’t make any marks and I didn’t know what to do. I switched to my Mac and right away it started making marks, But not dark enough, so then I changed the speed and power settings. I’m sure Windows would have worked if I’d known what I was doing, but I was only in Windows because I was playing around with LaserGRBL program which only works in Windows, so I pulled up Lightburn while still in Windows. I’m not a fan of Windows so I rebooted the Mac back into Mac OS and then got everything running. 1. Of course I had no installation problem with Mac because I’m an Apple computer person and I know how to load programs that are not apple certified (very simple). 2. and 3. Nor did I have any USB connectivity issues the this Comgro Z1. 4. so far no problems with the fonts.
Glad you’re at least oriented now in either case.
How this manifests is that not all variations within a font family will show as choices in the font pull-down and using bold or italics may have no visible effect for certain fonts. Apparently this is caused by the combination of a change in how MacOS font lists are presented and how fonts are managed in the UI toolkit.
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