I got Lightburn working on my Wecreat Vision 40w. I was able to get all the offsets set so bidirection looks great. Camera is dialed in and works great.
Issue is, all of a sudden my laser moves at a snails pace when doing fill. Earlier it was working super fast and I was able to burn stuff twice as fast as MakeIt! and the images all looked super sharp.
I stepped away for awhile and no when I try to run a job the laser head acts like it’s hesitating constantly. The speed bounces up and down, but generally runs way slower than what the settings are. Like if I have the speed set to 600mm/s it will range anywhere from like 10-200, but never run at full speed.
This is obviously causing a lot of inconsistences in the burns and sometimes burns all the way through the material. Turning off bi-direction or the x-offsets make no difference. Using the mm/m instead of mm/s don’t make any difference.
You want to be looking at the motor wiring and mechanics of the axis with erratic motion. Start by checking belt tension and for loose pulley set screws. Also confirm that when powered off you can move the gantry or laser along that axis by hand without any binding or excessive resistance.
I went back to the Wecreat Makeit! software and everything works 100% fine.
This seems to be something lightburn related.
It’s almost like the data isn’t getting to the laser fast enough. I’ve tried fiddling around with the communication settings and nothing really works except for the default settings that comes with their config file for the device.
If this were true, the machine would pause every time the data was not there soon enough. The flow rate is actually controlled by your PC and not Lightburn, but this is not your problem.
Lightburn has no config file for your or my devices. Config files come from the manufacturers of the lasers.
This suggests you have changed something in Lightburn, likely by accident. For example, if you were using mm/sec (in the Settings window) and somehow changed to mm/min, that would cause what you describe.
Do not be so quick to blame Lightburn. It is a pretty stable product.
I meant the setup file for lightburn that I downloaded from the manufactures website.
I’m 100% certain that nothing changed from the time I walked away to the time I came back. It literally went from working perfectly to won’t maintain a constant and correct speed just sitting for 30 minutes.
I’ve gone through the settings a million times, reinstalled Lightburn, tried different versions, wiped out all the settings and started from scratch based on the setup instructions provided by the manufacture and I keep getting the same result.
I don’t think it’s a “Lightburn problem” since I’ve been using it with no issues with my other laser for almost a year. Probably more of a compatibility issue with my hardware and Lightburn. I’ve seen videos of people using Lightburn with this same setup successfully so I’m just trying to see if someone else has see this issue and knows how to correct it. I love using Lightburn vs with Makeit! software the machine comes with and would like to make it work if I can.
You would be amazed at how many times this is said, followed by “Oops!!!” Myself included. So… the task at hand is to find out what changed. That is why we are here.
Start with entering $$ in the Console window. Then copy everything from the $$ down and paste it in a reply. Send that.
Now take a screen shot with the Cut settings window and the Laser window visible. Send that in another reply
Third, take a screen shot of the Settings window, Units and Grids tab and put that in the third reply.
Finally, Click on the Save GCode button and save the file with a .TXT extension. Add that to the fourth reply as an attachment.
Myself and others will examine these for a possible cause of your problem. Based on what you tell us, I do not think it is a hardware problem.
The $$ thing must be incompatible with this laser. It worked on my old one, but when I try it on this one it just stays at Busy 100% and doesn’t print anything in the console. I have to disconnect from the port and reconnect to get communication with the laser back.
Been doing some cutting the past couple hours and messing around. Think it’s good up until about 200mm/s. After that it the head will hesitate on lines, the burns become real uneven, and it starts slowing down if that helps at all.
I’ve been reading up on G-Code and looking at the G-Code saves from projects I’ve been doing it looks like it keeps telling the head to slow down with the S value. Attached is another project I was messing with that was an image. It was supposed to run at 200mm/s 30% power, but the g-code shows it to keep having the S-value of 300mm/pm. Is that normal? I never bothered to look at all this stuff with my old laser.
The number after the S controls the laser power level and has nothing to do with the speed of the G0 and G1 motion commands you’ll find on the same line. The letter S stands for “spindle”, from back in the day when G-Codes applied to shiny new CNC machinery streaming paper tape through the controller.
Ah ok. I guess I misunderstood the instructions. Never really looked at the g-code before and thought the s value was speed. Thanks for the clarification.
Just wanted to post a side by side so you can see the results when using both Lightburn and Makeit! with the same settings. Makeit doesn’t have bi-directional support so Lightburn should have been much faster.
