I mean, i paid a few thousand bucks extra to have those features and thus want to use them.
To me, as end user, it doesn’t really matter who’s to blame - although i strongly suggest it’s xTool since they stated it’s supported, instead of “works kindof”.
But yes, in the end, the main features of my P2 aren’t working with LIghtBurn, so yes, it’s useless for me!
If i wanted to measure and switch code all the time, i could’ve spared a few thousand bucks!
So, whoever is to blame doesn’t really matter. Fact is: as of now, it’s not working in LightBurn due to reasons.
Since xTool didn’t even bother to answer to the mail i sent to them about this issue, i went to the next instance - LightBurn!
And yes, of course LB is a great piece of software! f i wouldn’t care, i wouldn’t be here, would i? It’s just more realistic to get it fixed by someone here ( as proven by @ktmcmo ) than by contacting the multi billion dollar company. They would probably only act if all those positive videos they got in the past, turned around en masse - which isn’t going to happen.
So no, i’m not being harsh, just stating my personal point of view. Again: i love LB and it’s possibilities, the workflow without camera and measuring is just way too slow to justify buying it now that my trial ran out.
As soon as it’s working, i’m the first to buy it since it offers a lot of highly useful features that will probably never be implemented into XCS.
I sent another email to them, hoping it will somehow help.
"Hello.
The P2 does not properly support LightBurn! While you can use basic functions, the main reason we bought the P2 for (autofocus & camera) are NOT WORKING with LightBurn.
I am an active user in the LightBurn community and it seems the contact between xTool and LightBurn is flawed. I have no idea who is to blame but in the end, that doesn’t matter.
I would highly appreciate that xTool would contact LightBurn developers and provide the needed assistance so those two companies can work together flawlessly. I really like both and it would be a dream team. Please make it work for us - the paying users and bussinesses!
Thank you!
Greetings from Belgium,
Daniel."
Would be great if more people sent a request that are affected by this.
I’m surprised you didn’t investigate whether your extra investment actually works with LightBurn before the purchase. There must be others who have the same disappointing experience with this laser (in connection with LB). It is a deal breaker for you not to buy LightBurn, I want to return the Laser instead, after all your laser manufacturer has cheated on the scale and decorated itself with the predicate “LightBurn”. I don’t know the roadmap from the developers, but I can imagine that there are other more pressing tasks waiting for them instead of adding another machine/accessory to LightBurn’s machine park.
Well in the end i should’ve invested more time but yeah, since we bought it pretty shortly after release, there wasn’t much negative feedback. Even now you have to dig really deep to actually find anything negative about it.
And yes, it’s a great laser and i’m mostly happy with it, still, the missing fully functionality with LightBurn sucks!
Oh and yes, it’s even mentioned on their site that those two functions don’t work. You just have to be somewhere rather hidden to read about it. Also, that article was from several months ago, so you’d figure they fixed it by now…
Overall it’s still (one of) the best lasers in it’s category of desktop lasers. Glowforge and Gweike both have connection issues and/or are cloud based, so a big red flag. Anything else is just way too big to put in a room at home.
Sure, over time it will (probably) get fixed - either by the community or by them - but i’ll be damned for believing when a company says “supported” they mean “fully working”. That was an expensive lesson to learn
This made me really laugh. xTool doesnt care about you, or me, or anyone really. They care about over marketing their closed ecosystem junk to as many suckers as possible.
It is a little rude formulated and not quite correct. Everyone who sells a product is interested in you, not least financially
But, then there are those who are not so smart and have not seen that Lightburn is a must for many buyer of laser machines and that Lightburn has gradually become a defacto standard in laser processing software in the private and in the semi -professional market.
I think Lightburn doesn’t even take money to “use” the program as advertising for their laser machines…
If the development of lightburn continues as it has done since it is started and it is not sold then I am sure that most laser producers will build “Lightburn-Compatible” in the future. There will be more money to earn this way than without Lightburn, that’s reason enough.
Like everyone else that bought a P2 expecting it to work with Lightburn I am disappointed. For the most part I still edit files with Lightburn and import them into XCS for cutting. I’m just not sure why P2 support hasn’t been given a higher priority. Is this common for new devices? I can live without the curve feature but Camera positioning and material (Z Axis) height control is a must. The short answer we get is “it’s on the list but the developers are busy with other things” or " So few people own the P2 so it’s not a high priority" bottom line some people bad mouth XTool for their prices and/or oversaturated marketing but the truth remains they sell machines and continue to develop new products. It would seem that it would be in the best interest of Lightburn to support the full range of XTool products as long as they continue to grow.
XTool is a terrible company. They dropped warranty for a product 5 months after it launched, and are crap in general…from personal experience. do you realize how many chinese companies create lasers and constantly churn out new machines? You try keeping up w that from a support perspective.
If xtools software works for you, use it. Support may come in the future, or it may not depensing on demand.
The features you want can be put in on lightburns feature request page. If tons of people buy the machine and request it from lightburn it might happen sooner.
There are numerous posts here from lightburn personally stating they dont hear back from Xtool. All that company does is slap a “works with lightburn” statement on their marketing to sucker people into buying their machines…and it works.
Well maybe LB can kind of pressure them into either removing the “LightBurn supported” and thus possibly sell less OR pressure them into working together better if they want to continue using the slogan.
Either way, the consumer wins something in the end.
And considering the rather big success of the P2, i think having the main laser software working with it would generate even more hype for a decent machine, rather than people realizing it only works in basic mode with it.
Hi, new here. I’ve been using Lightburn for about a month. I’ve tried getting basic functions working well with the P2 and I’m not having a lot of success. The integration is just not there yet. That is not Lightburn’s fault in my opinion. The Xtools people are highly touting their device as “Lightburn compatible”. Their advertising is, in my opinion, highly deceptive. I purchased my P2 from Amazon for the simple reason that I COULD return it. BTW. I have ALL accessories! I’m giving serious thought about sending it back and trying something else. I’m going to write their tech support people and give them the ultimatum. Get it working correctly with LB or give me my money back!
Not as simple.
First, i didn’t buy it directly from xTool but in a local store.
Second, it’s used.
Third, even with the “problems” it has, it’s still better than the other CO² desktop lasers out there.
we would’ve gone for something else but the place we have at our disposal doesn’t allow something like eg the OMTech. It’s simply too big for the place. Plus we wouldn’t even be able to get it into the room it would have to go.
Only possibility would be to buy 2 smaller lasers that cover all fields together. This would however mean the store needs to accept to take it back. A thing i’m doubtful they would do or are even forced to do.
It’s not that the thing is bad, certainly not, it just lacks support. So in the end, only time will tell.
Worst case: we have to measure the stuff manually and edit the GCode each time and somehow get a decent preview of the area.
You should get them to remove compatible from their advertising for the P2
We’re in the process of making changes to how LightBurn resellers can market their machines in terms of compatibility - because as you’ve seen, it means something completely different from machine to machine.
I have a P2 in my own shop with the intent of aiding the development efforts on our end.
We very much do want to have better compatibility. We have a P2 in the hands of our developer team as well with this intent in mind. The reality is that our resources need to be managed very carefully with such a small team.
We could prioritize the P2, sure, and that would be great for P2 users - but on the other hand we could work on features that benefit everyone - like MillMage, Nesting, and other big-time features that everyone could use.
We can, and will, have more support built out for the P2 in the future. We recently pushed some changes for GWeike Cloud and OMTech polar machines that have a negative Z axis as part of working on problems with P2 compatibility. There are other not-yet-ready features that are also in progress.
We’re sorry it’s taken as long as it has, we get it, I want those fixes as much as you do - we can only ask for your patience at this time. If the camera/autofocus/3D features are total game breakers for you at this time, you do have the option to use XCS for those particular features until we can roll out support in LightBurn.
Well, at the very least you are much more customer oriented than xTool, that’s for sure. (still haven’t replied …)
For the time being, we will just have to wait this one out and work with work arounds like inkspace, path tracing and so on and importing these into XCS to at least have a little better way of handling the routes the laser takes.
[ I really am baffled by that “AI pathing” they mention - this afternoon we cut out some names, letter by letter, and oh boy… Why should you go J>A>Y>D>E>N when you can go A>D>E>J>Y>N. Makes sense? No? Well, to me it didn’t either XD ]
Can you roughly put an ETA on when i would need to watch patch notes for LightBurn to include those features?
Oh and also where to actually find them on the website?
Any way to maybe get pinged or PMed when they release?
We also have a Public Beta program ← click the link.
As a rule, we do not comment on timelines for feature releases. In our experience, doing so leads to disappointed customers when a feature needs additional testing and validation time before a public release. So, the best way to keep tabs is to use the public beta or monitor the news page above.
