Hello All,
I purchased the Snapmaker 40W laser recently and am considering using LightBurn instead of Luban (Snapmaker control software). I’ve read a bunch of tutorials here which are all great! But something I’ve noticed is they all seem to be a few years old. As such I see some potential bugs and lacking features that I’m unsure if they have been updated. Hopefully this can help others (and myself) decide if using LightBurn with Snapmaker makes sense now in 2024.
Seemingly known issues:
- Unable to run boundary with touch screen.
- Ramming bed on first attempts. (Less of an issue just a concern)
- Needing to zero to bottom corner of work piece (or bed, unclear, this may not matter if cutting in center is a bad practice).
- Miscalculating boundary. (I use this feature a lot because I tend to center my cuts, but maybe that is a bad decision)
- Mismatch in laser power. (This seems to be solved, as Luban uses 1000 as max power and LightBurn uses 255, but I may be missing something here.)
- Power not being properly adjusted (Fix is to always emit S value.) (This may be fixed based on more recent replies)
- Needing custom controller firmware for Snapmaker (unclear on what this is allowing, I think serial control)
Questions:
- Can I use the touchscreen on the device to set material thickness? (Not in relation to laser power, but in relation to Z offset.)
- Can I set the location of the cut on the touchscreen?
- Can LightBurn export a file to run on the Snapmaker? (My machine is not near my computer, so serial control does not work.)
- Do you only need to verify the origin if you are not using the Snapmaker touchscreen? (If I am running boundary, I don’t see a point)
Huge apologies if these questions and seemingly known issues are answered / resolved elsewhere, I haven’t been able to find them.
Based on my inability to relocate my computer next to my machine, I am concerned that LightBurn is not the best approach because it seems to cause issues / incompatibilities with the touchscreen. Would like to hear opinions from you all with experience with all of these things.
Thanks