I have used a CNC router for several years and am very comfortable using Vectric’s VCarve Pro for design and CAM operations. Although XCS works fine for the S1, it’s not a mature, full-featured program like VCarve Pro, and so I downloaded a trial of Lightburn to try. Unfortunately, a lot happened during that month, and I never had the chance to try it, so it expired.
Since I don’t need Lightburn for designing (I can use VCarve Pro or Affinity Designer for that), what benefits does Lightburn offer over XCS as far as processing for the laser? I know you can set min/max power in LB which can’t be done in XCS, but how necessary is that if the laser output is constantly adjusting its power output anyway? If you use Lightburn, please let me know what processing capabilities it has that are not available in XCS that you can’t live without?
I just received my S1 yesterday, but I used a D1 Pro 40 watt for more than a year. My primary work has been engraving tumblers for a local real estate agent. Here are some thoughts.
Lightburn has given me far more control over engraving settings than XCS provides.
Lightburn allows careful calibration of the focus point.
A recent Lightburn update allows the user to be burning one file while working on another (it opens another instance of Lightburn, which is not very common on a Mac).
Lightburn has some tools that are very hand, such as automatically creating a material test grid and more alignment options.
This happens more than one might suspect, so the team did something fun.
Please launch your copy of LightBurn with the expired trial and test the following.
Open your email service and begin composing an email to Support@lightburnsoftware.com - Copy and paste this email address if that’s convenient.
Click Help, (top Row - furthest to the right.)
Click (License Management)
Click (Extend Trial)
LightBurn copies the Trial Key onto your clipboard.
Click to compose the body of the email, paste the Trial Key from the clipboard into the email and gently ask the good folks on the Support desk for a Trial Extension.
Generally, when folks ask for a trial extension, we’ll do it once or twice.
One of the big advantages is the community. By supporting open source hardware we seem to have attracted a customer base that enjoys sharing.
XCS is a closed system that only supports xTool Devices.
I haven’t gotten very far into XCS but I imagine that LightBurn handles images better. Check out ‘Norton White Tile’ images in Finished Creations.
Somehow I missed your response, thank you for the insight. I had my trial extended for Lightburn, but find that it burns much hotter than when using XCS with similar settings. Have you experienced that…is this a known thing? Wondering if some type of calibration is needed in a config file?
Honestly, I kind of distrust XCS. It might just be that the S1 is so new that both Lightburn and XCS aren’t yet dialed in well. I think the S1 does burn hotter than the D1Pro40 in general; perhaps it’s that the focusing is so much more accurate. And it is unusable using Offset Fill in Lightburn; I think it’s burning at 100% power. Normal Line and Fill modes work ok, but as you said, hotter.
This seems unlikely. There should be no difference in how normal lines are processed vs offset fill lines. It’s possible that the machine cannot move as quickly as specified and is dwelling longer on the same spot than ideal. Try reducing both speed and power to see if that makes a difference.
Do you know why the S1 burns hotter using Lightburn vs. XCS? I’ve had no problems using XCS, it’s actually worked very well for me. But it is limited which is why I’d love to purchase Lightburn. But unless I can understand how to properly dial it in, I can’t justify it. I just tried re-creating a material test grid for cherry hardwood that I originally ran in XCS to compare the 2. But I had to stop it because the lettering and numbers for the X/Y labels looked to be burning at 100% power. I checked in the “Edit Text Setting” properties sheet, and it’s set to Speed - 100 (mm\sec) & Max Power - 15%. So why did it burn through some spots in1/8" hardwood if power was 15%?
Perhaps because 15% is too high for the speed and operation you requested?
I assume the Text was done as a line operation. If so, it’s almost certain you were getting nowhere near 100 mm/s speeds as the laser has to rapidly shift direction for each letter. Unless the firmware is well tuned to accommodate for that drastic of a reduction of speed then it’s likely that you’ll get overburning. Try reducing speed and power. Or in the case of the Material Test, change the Text to a Fill operation which is better suited for high speed scanning.
I’m just comparing the settings & results between both programs. Using XCS to create a material grid, the text is set to a score cut (line) at 50% power, 150 mm/s speed and the results are good. But at a much lower reported power, 15%, Lightburn scorched the wood. So, my question is, why would my results differ so much when my power setting in XCS (50%) is 3x the power that Lightburn is reporting (15%)? I realize there is also a difference in speed but not enough to produce these results. I’m just trying to figure this out, thanks for your help.
Are you able to generate the g-code from both XCS and LightBurn for comparison?
But keep in mind that XCS has different firmware function between XCS and all other applications as far as I understand. It’s possible that XCS handles the variable power differently for jobs done in XCS vs 3rd party.
I’ve attached the g-code exports. And yes, I understand the impact of the firmware. But I was hoping to find that there was a known “fix” that would interpret the gcode or something to allow the S1 to communicate better with LB, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Hoping I’m wrong
EDIT - BTW, not the same rows & columns for the gcode I sent. I didn’t have the settings stored in XCS, so I just saved the default grid as an example.
I don’t see anything obviously wrong in the g-code files although it looks like you don’t have comparable values listed.
One thing I did find interesting is that in LightBurn you seem to be using inches. I’m wondering if the S1 has a problem with values provided in inches. Toggle the in/mm field in Numeric Edits toolbar so that it’s in mm. Then try running again.
Does that make a difference? Some firmware don’t properly handle inch values in all situations.
So that is the issue, Lightburn needs to be set to mm in order to work properly with the XTool S1, thanks again for the suggestion. One other question though. The first time I ran the test today it was set to Line, I forgot to set it to Fill and this was the result. Why didn’t it just outline all 4 sides of each square? BTW, you can see the charred text from the previous tests when LB was set to inches.
Well, I did just change to mm but it’s the first time engraving in LB. I had stopped the first test when the text was scorching. Once I changed from line to fill, it engraved correctly. Any idea what’s causing the triangles?
