I have a Snapmaker A-350 W 10W upgrade. Snapmaker engraving can be run from the Lightburn program and I like that better than Luban. However I have two issues when trying to engrave there is no place to enter material thickness and when ready to engrave unlike Luban there is not the automatic material thickness via camra feature. I have to guess at the height of the laser module from the surface of the material. This makes for several tests before I get it right.
Is there something I am missing in the Lightburnds program or is there a way to set the laser module height guide somewhere?
I’ve been using LightBurn as well, but I do get to use the leveling feature by sending the file to the machine instead of running directly from LightBurn.
My process:
- Make your cut setup and everything in LightBurn
- Use “Save gcode” to save a file (check that it has a
.ncextension, SM doesn’t understand.gcodefor laser files - Put the file on your machine.@brent113 packaged up @zvalentine22’s great script to allow for a right click and “send to snapmaker via wifi”, you can use this, luban, or a USB key to get the file over to the machine.
- On the machine, choose to load and run the file
It then lets you use the machine’s auto leveling feature to automatically select the correct height.
Do make sure that you don’t have Z-offsets set in your cuts, since the machine should already be at the correct Z height when starting the job.
Also, this will run the job dependent on the set origin, you can change it after the leveling process and you should be able to run boundary (although, it’s not as good as LB’s rubberband feature).
When you do the laser focus calibration, either initially, or going to the menu and doing it (the one where you set the end of the laser on the bed), it sets Z0. Since the 10W seems to have a fixed focal length, it automatically moves up the proper distance (it shows the distance it moves up on the home screen, should be around 30mm). Z0 is now set to be focused on the bed. So if you go to work origin or use the gcode
G0 Z0
It brings the toolhead down to where the bed is the focus surface. Any material just moves up Xmm from this location. So after you setup your project and connect via lightburn, go to the Console tab, should be the third one, and substitute your material thickness in the above command. i.e. for 3mm plywood you would use;
G0 Z3
Then you can run your project as normal. There’s usually no Z movements in Gcode (unless you input multiple passes) so it always just runs wherever the Z was already, so if you manually move it to the material height, there’s no guesswork. Otherwise, you can always export the gcode and run it locally on the machine to use the built in calibration.
EDIT: Some clarification, and ‘reset’ method to make sure you’re on the proper home/Z0. If you accidentally mess up the Z origin by using say, G92 Z0 (this sets Z home to the current height) you can reset it by moving in machine coords to the focal length, then settings Z0 again. An example is my laser height is 30.2mm (again you can see it on the home of the touchscreen) so to make sure my Z0 is set to the bed I’d use these commands in order;
G53 (this tells the machine to move in machine coords)
G0 Z30.2 (use the distance on the touchscreen)
G54 (swaps back to work coords)
G92 Z0 (sets the Z origin to focused on the bed)
After doing this, using G0 Z# to move to your material height is again correct.
Thank you nivekmai, I will try that tomorrow. I would prefer to stay in LB but if that is the easiest way that is what I will do.
Thanks again
Thank you Skreelink, It sounds a little complicated for my experience but I will surely give it a try as I prefer to stay in LB once I get my project set up and completed.
Thanks again , and I will let you know if I can get it to work.
You could do a mix of the 2:
Send any file over to the machine and go through the job setup on the machine, but stop right before you actually start cutting:
On the machine
- Start
- Pick any random file
- Ready
- Auto mode
- Home
- Start (to agree to how auto mode works)
- Next (to agree to the measurements limitations)
- Next
At this point, the machine will move to the correct focus height for the material, and you can record the current Z setting under “machine coordinates”:
Then exit the process on the machine (just hit the little back arrow on the top to back all the way out), and you could just use the recorded z height when working in LightBurn.
Side note: it’d be great if the machine would allow us to use some gcode to do the measurement process without having to go into a job…
Attached is video of the buzzing sound per above. Please watch to the end as the last time I moved the laser it did something it never did before.
OOps, I tried to upload and got message the file is to big to upload. I will have to figure out how to send a link to view. Continued soon:
Thanks
Memtenn60
I don’t know if this will link the video as I don’t do this much.
HTML:
AF1QipNUPBuDSq5ucnri9aGAz0I3Tenv9sMFWUWJGyrV
Dale R. Mitchell
