Very disappointed in Luban

Could you share your support ticket #?

Tickets are
151045
151047

Love the cut raspberry!

Hi reesesm2000,
Apologies for the inconvenience. We have identified the issue as a lack of internal communication within our technical support team. We have already forwarded this to our support team. For further assistance, you are welcome to reply to the support email. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. :slightly_smiling_face:
Best,

It’s so sad that the Artisan is let down so much by its corresponding software and the lack of official support for alternatives.

For the laser module, you could (in theory) use Lightburn, but then the machine behaves weird. It will stop whenever the laser is switched on or off, thus slowing the job down imensely.

For printing Luban is at least funtional, yet it lacks many advanced functions and is just miles behind almost every other slicer. And although there is a Snapmaker plugin for the Prusia-slicer, it’s mainly for the J1.

For CnC milling just look at this thread


This machine is build like a work of art, but sadly its software prevents it from becoming much more than that.

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That is the thing. When I was unpacking it, I actually thought I had made a good buy. Then Luban arrived on the scene. What a disappointment. Rather than spending time on Luban, they should get integrations perfect for a few popular free and a few popular paid solutions. It will probably take less effort and cost. The only one they publish is for Cura and it only works for single filament. Trying to print support with Cura is a mess. So in reality, a very well engineered hardware platform is severly hamstrung by the software they supply. SW should be easy. Good HW is usually hard. They got the hard part done.

You’re absolutely right about the build quality. Unfortunately, making a great, reliable machine that works right out of the box does not get the uninitiated into CAD/CAM easily. The hurdle though is the CAD/CAM part, not the machine. I recommend you grab Fusion by the balls and work your way through the learning curve.

The product is free. So the investment is time. I use it to design both 3DP projects and CNC projects. And it works well in conjunction with the Snapmaker. A350T in my case. People describe the learning curve as steep, but I think that is unfair. I’ve gotten intermediate competence with it entirely through YOUT videos. What IS required, is a change in mindset or your perspective. My son grew up with these devices in high school and he and I attack a design problem completely differently. He begins writing parameters and uses command line in Fusion or any similar tool. He actually prefers inventor. I see what he is doing and understand it as a shortcut afterward, but I don’t think that way. It’s like the difference between learning Morse code by ear or by sight. Learning by ear will shorten your path to competence and enable you to be MUCH faster. Learning by sight will literally hamstring you forever because you will forever THINK about it instead of just hearing the words, like speech.

I realize this may not be welcome truth, but the challenge for you at this point is almost certainly thinking like the design tool rather than Luban not making design easy.

As to Snapmaker’s strategy, they absolutely did tick the box on making a very solid and reliable machine. That same son of mine is very frustrated with his choice to go with Ender because the thing is VERY difficult just to calibrate and get working.

Luban is NOT a design tool and I’m sorry they leave that impression. But I have grabbed many designs off of Thingiverse and printed them straight away using Luban to communicate with the machine and they work fine.

I Second clewis’ comment about Cura. It’s an excellent tool and I use it extensively. But even there, you will find you need to fiddle with parms etc. to get prints exactly the way you want them and efficiently.

IMHO Snapmaker has made the get-go MUCH simpler than other machines for 3DP and CNC. (I don’t use the laser much yet.) The difficulty is, as you have found, in the design side. It’s not LEGOs yet on anybody’s system.

I encourage you not to quit but to keep in the dialog. This forum has a very helpful crew in general and in combination with YOUT has gotten me to the point where I often use the system (at least once a week) to get a project done that I couldn’t do with conventional woodworking/building techniques.

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I sympathize with you, Luban is useless making it necessary to SEARCH for a FIX.
Fussion is my go to for 3d and CNC work. If purchased Lightburn for laser projects.

Snapmaker should be ashamad of Loban,
It is a SICK LOKE.

For what Luban is, it’s perfectly fine. As other stated, it’s not CAD or design tool. It converts whatever model into the required format for printing, lasering and routing. If one needs more than that capability there are plenty of other tools. I can’t imagine a newb opening and setting up SM, and having to deal with a more complex tool than Luban. That would be very offputting IMO.

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