Software Upgrade

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone…

First of all I really enjoy using Lightburn. It is awesome in it’s operation, documentation (including the forum answers), and the features are the best.

My laser is a chinese 15w diode laser using a arduino knockoff controller that I flashed to Grbl 1.1f. Please note that I have been using all the features of Lightburn without any errors.

Now to what I need help with. I bought Lightburn in March 2019 and just recently renewed and upgraded from 9.09 to version 9.19. Up until 2-days ago (pre 9.19 install) my operation was as follows:

  1. I was setting and fine turning my speeds between 300 to 1400.

  2. For both image and line burning I set Line Interval at 0.035 average.

  3. Power was set between 40 and 75 and burned very nice, sharp, and crisp in leather of soft wood.

  4. In the Console Window I had no Alarms at any time.

Since I upgraded to version 9.19 my laser’s setting and operation have changed. When I try to change my settings back to my original settings Lightburn refused to let these settings stick. Giving me degraded burn.

  1. The speed settings have auto changed and now read between 21 and 31.5 for Line-Fill and 39.4 for image.

  2. The Line Interval settings auto changed from .035 to an average setting of 0.00118.

  3. The laser power sometimes let me set it at 40-70 but often auto reduces the setting to 25-35

  4. I am now getting Grbl Alarms 3 and 9. Although I went into the Device settings and turned off the Auto-Home and stopped the Alarm-9 from showing.

Most of all the final burn is not as nice, sharp, and crisp…

Do you have any suggestions to help me get my control of Lightburn and get the quality of my burns back?

Thank you
Mike

None of your speed values have units here, so it’s impossible to know what actual speed you were using. It sounds like you used to use 300 to 1400 mm per minute and you’ve possibly changed your settings to be in inches now, possibly inches/minute, but that’s a guess.

0.00118 inches is about 0.03mm, so that also supports this theory.

Thank you Oz.

That cleared up 1-3.

Do you have any suggestions for the Alarm-3?

Mike

GRBL ALARM:3 most likely means that the laser or Windows dropped the connection while running. Check that the USB cable is secure, and of decent quality, the wires aren’t running next to the stepper wiring, and the power supply is connected securely.

Oz, Thank you again.
I will go through and redo as needed the wiring.

Mike

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