So what went wrong here?

[RickTracer (Patrick Hutton)]

Hi all - new user evaluating on the 30 day trial. I love the interface and this is the first major problem I’ve encountered… Have cut a number of other panels ok and indeed cut out a single one of these panels last night. But when trying to cut out 4 identical panels (the image was prepared in Inkscape as an SVG) the cutter has made some very strange movements (there should be 4 identical panels with square tabs round 3 sides).

There were no noises like something caught and indeed the drawing on the Ruida controller matched what was cut. As you can see in Lightburn the preview showed as expected.

Failed Fronts.lbrn (132.9 KB)

I’ve copy / pasted 1 of them from Inkscape and used LB to create a pattern of 4 and that has cut well, but I’d like to know if this is a bug that has a fix / can be fixed?

Thanks for any help!

[LightBurn (Oz)]

Can you show the settings used for the Line layer? (both common and advanced sections)

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

I have the same controller. If you upload your lbrn file to this post, I will run the job and see how it comes out for me.

[RickTracer (Patrick Hutton)]

Thanks folks, here are the screenshots and lightburn file.

Failed Fronts.lbrn (132.9 KB)

[Rick (Rick James)]

FWIW, this is more of an asset management response, but I hope it is helpful to you moving forward.

One thing I noticed in this file is the outer shapes are not closed shapes. To help manage these assets, I would select all the outside shapes and use the ALT-J to ‘Auto-Join’ to close these and make them a single shape, instead of a collection of 92 disconnected line segments.

I would then select the inner oval cut shape and ‘Group’ then together. You now have a single asset, containing 2 shapes, then duplicate as many as you’d like.

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

I downloaded your file, opened it in lightburn and the only thing I change was speed and power to run the job on some chipboard. My result did not have the issue you illustrated. Sorry for the bad picture (this is a scrap piece I just used to apply Danish oil to something):

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

I agree with @Rick:

@Rick

I would select all the outside shapes and use the ALT-J to ‘Auto-Join’ to close these and make them a single shape

Fronts_Joined.lbrn (83.0 KB)

Which firmware version are you running on your controller?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

You have outward kerf applied, but your shapes aren’t closed, so that won’t work - they have to be fully joined / continuous loops. That shouldn’t be causing any trouble, it just won’t have any effect.

[joel1 (Joel)]

Odd, I just tried the failed file on my 6445G and had no issue. I did not burn anything but went by the trace on the display. In the OP, the trace looks broken, on mine it’s fine. This was with 9.17.

The only setting I changed was to go 150mm/S so it would finish quickly.

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

Additional thoughts / questions:

• How are you connected to your machine (Ethernet or USB)?
• How are you sending the job to the controller (Streaming it via or transferring it via )?
• If you were to send the job again in the exact same way as you have before, would the result (even if wrong) be inconsistent?

I am wondering if what you are experiencing is a result of network transmission errors, dropped packets, faulty USB cable, etc… (some kind of issue causing gaps in the data). If you are connected via Ethernet, then “this case maybe UDP is a…”

EDIT: Ah well, I just looked at your picture of your HMI, and I see you’re not connected via ethernet (bottom right corner shows no network connection)

[RickTracer (Patrick Hutton)]

Thanks for all the suggestions and great info. I’ll for sure combine the shapes next time - it was an export from Fusion 360 taken in to Inkscape and then LightBurn so I’ll take account of that next time.

I just ran it again with the tube turned off and the trace has come out fine. I was connected via USB cable and while it’s a little wobbly I jogged it a few times but the trace looked fine. It could also have been the laptop was busy while the job cut too. I assume there’s no “OctoPrint” for lasers? I might switch to using a USB drive if I experience it again.

My firmware is 15.01.19 - thanks for all the great suggestions!

[fred_dot_u (fred ungewitter)]

I had used a direct USB connection to the cutter for a while when I first installed the machine. With RDWorks software, it was miserable to get a complete file to transfer undamaged. The more complex (larger) files were certain to have flaws. Using a USB flash drive was better, but too many button presses to get it from the drive to the controller.

Going to a wired local network connection was the answer for me. I installed a wireless extender that has a hard wired port available, as I had no way of getting an ethernet cable to the hobby room.

good luck

[RickTracer (Patrick Hutton)]

@Stroonzo

Just to close out on this, I’ve had issues with both the USB connection (the port on my laptop seems a little damaged) and network connection too both failing larger jobs. The best thing I’ve found is indeed to use the “Send” button to send the job to the machine, then the File button on the machine’s controller to select it and then hit the green button on the controller to start it. This seems solid so far and it looks more of a hardware / communications issue than LightBurn - thanks for all the great pointers!

[LightBurn (Oz)]

If you hold the Shift key when you click Send, it will auto-start the file for you after the transfer completes, so it’s more like using ‘Start’. Just make sure you remove files from the controller periodically - if the memory gets full they start doing weird things.