We have six Snapmaker machines with rotary modules and are engraving names on different items. We use Snapmaker Luban software to engrave the names, but it’s very cumbersome to use for multiple machines. The process currently involves the following steps:
Upload the name file in PNG format separately.
Move the name to the center of the design.
Select the correct toolpath.
Save the file.
Generate the G-code in preview.
Export the file to the workspace.
Disconnect from the previous machine.
Connect to the correct machine.
Confirm the connection (almost every time).
Finally, start engraving.
This process is very time-consuming.
Is there a faster way to do this using different software, as the only thing that changes is the name and the machine? Ideally, we would like to upload everything in a batch and just select the machine for each task.
If so, could you please provide more specific instructions? I don’t have experience with other software.
It remembers a session token, can’t quite remember the file location, but user profile folder for luban or something similar. If you connect to the same machine after disconnecting then the token matches and no need to re-confirm connection via touchscreen. If you connect to a different machine or another pc connects to your snapmaker then the tokens no longer match for you’re next connection attempt.
I guess you could just create 6 user accounts, installing luban in each, one per machine (user names match machines for simplicity). Then each copy of luban would belong to different users and so each one would always be still associated to the machine it was used for.
You’d have to login and logout or use switch user to swap between snapmaker machines but that seems a fair compromise.
If you are on a relatively new firmware and luban you could start the file by printing from Luban and then simply disconnect and the machine goes on.
I would have a look into lightburn maybe there is a automatic routine for name tag engraving, don’t know but it’s the way to go for laser experts here.
As Wyphorn says, You should be able to open six versions of Luban in six windows tabs and leave them open. (Set windows to open those same tabs on start-up each day).
Connect each tab to a different machine. And you should be able to leave everything the same, changing only the names each time and uploading the files to the SM machine.
If you use my lightburn guides to set up lightburn + repeatable origin, then also setup my drag/drop files. Your flow would be to simply toss the material into the corner on the bed, do your project in Lightburn, export the gcode file, then drag/drop onto the sender file, which can be set up per-machine. So if you were doing the same project on multiple machines, you’d simply drop the same file onto the .bat for each individual machine. This is how my workflow goes.
There’s no batch way to do that to my knowledge. However, once you have a good base layout, mass generating projects can go rather quickly. I like to do a non-output layer representation of my workpiece, then I can always accurately and quickly place what I need.
An example; this was on a water bottle with flat sides, was customizing them for a group of people (the gray outlines are the size of the bottle, then the inner one is the laserable area). After I did this layout, I simply dragged what they wanted in, resized, centered, exported. Taking only seconds for each.
Then I just tossed the bottle in, drag/dropped the gcode file and off it went. Simply repeating for each one without fiddling with the touchscreen or refocusing, positioning, etc. Just drop and go.
Okay, the PNG works now. However, when I open six tabs and connect each to a separate machine, it still starts engraving on last machine I connected to even it shows it’s connected to a diferrent machine in browser. Each tab has same ip address.
I was going to say at the top of this topic: you are going to have problems because Luban will update any settings or choices back to the disk and overwrite (if it can) any files saved by another session.
You could try software like Sandboxie, but the downside will be you might want to save some settings or material preferences and have those settings available to all sessions of Luban, but isolated sessions of Luban will not allow this. You won’t be able to have it both ways.
Ah, you are right. The Browser sessions just use the API of luban and luban handles the connection information. So I think you are right and luban is maybe the wrong tool for the TO. I would try to use multiple Windows users and Sessions to check If these share the config.
If you have something that can generate a bunch of gcode files, you can use this tool: GitHub - macdylan/sm2uploader: A command-line tool for send the gcode file to Snapmaker Printers via WiFi connection. to upload the files to a specific Snapmaker (based on IP address, ie: sm2uploader -host 10.1.2.3 printer1/*), that way you could batch it up to have each set of gcode files in a directory for each printer, then run the above tool to upload all the files to the desired printer.
That does not help with starting the job, but maybe another step to automation.
