for CnC and 3d printing i have been told fusion 360 with another program i can’t remember (but i have it somewhere)
@widjit said Lightburn was excellent for laser? do you guys/gals use any other program for laser? as i have found luban is pretty good
I don’t have any problem with Luban for most of what I’ve been lasering.
Mostly logos and fairly contrasty artwork. The occasional grayscale logo. Not much of straight photos. I think that’s where lightburn excels is with grayscale and dithering. Still need to play with it more, but for now Luban works fine.
-S
thanks sdj544, i was really impressed with the photo lasering in luban. but i am sure it is much better with lightburn - just checked the cost of lightburn, unless i start selling the pic’s - i might stay with luban 
thanks again - it is good to know there are alternatives out there.
Just got my Snapmaker 2 and am trying to learn Both Luban and Lightburn. Snapmaker installed Luban smoothly and worked on WiFi. Trying Lightburn I guess I need to gut a USB cable to work. My computer doesn’t seem to recognize I even have a cable connected. I think I’m going to burn through my 30 day trial without ever sending an image to the laser. This is just a hobbiest thing for me but I’ld really like to put some photos to wood and make some jigsaw puzzles before christmas.
You really don’t gain anything by controlling the machine directly from Lightburn - in fact it’s a known incompatibility. You’ll need to send the files to the touchscreen over Wifi, or using a thumb drive, and running the .nc files from there.
Brent thank you for such a fast response. Luban makes it easy to send files over wifi to unit. Is it similarly easy to do it from lightburn? I guess I’m trying to understand why I would want to use lightburn.
I’m trying to make baby steps through the system. Things I can acomplish within 15 to 30 minutes of using the system.
My first goal Cut something with the laser. Accomplished by by doing calibration. 4 lines that almost cut a square.
2nd I wanted to cut a circle arround an image I put on a peace of paper. result learning opportunity. My origin wasn’t right and it cut about 2 inches to the left.
I’ve been working with paper and leather because I have plenty available for scrap and paper cuts much faster than wood while I am still trying to learn.
Is there some value in making drawings in Inkscape and then bringing them over? Years ago I had access to a 60w laser cutter at a makerspace and so I might be more comfortable making shapes and images there.
I’m going to have to look up what an nc file is since I’ve heard it here a few times.
I think my next goal is to create 8 1 inch circles 1.5 inches apart. these are to hold chess pieces for my chess board. Looking forward to trying to 3d print chess pieces after I get fully comfortable with laser cutting. I also will be trying to cut face masks (around eyes not mouth) out of leather with etchings on the mask but I need to build up some basics with this machine first.
For file transfers I use this File Transfer via WiFi. I find it much faster than loading the file in luban and then walking back and forth to the printer twice.
I like your methodology. It’s good practice in lightburn to make a grid with varying power and speeds which will help you select laser settings for any given project and material.
I think inkscape is a great program and a lot of people use it for making designs.
I’ve been having issues with “run boundary” in files created with lightburn on my A350. I’ve followed all of the info I’ve been able to find about using lightburn with snapmaker on both snapmaker and lightburn forums.
I’m thinking it has something to do with machine origin being bottom left lin lightburn and in the center of the workspace on the machine.
Any suggestions?
Run boundary won’t work because the touchscreen calculates the boundary using assumptions that only apply to gcode created in G90 absolute mode. Lightburn creates G91 relative moves however, so these assumptions result in the wrong boundary being calculated.
You either have to have faith and trust it’ll work, or you have to use the run boundary functions inside Lightburn.
I’ll give the run boundary in lightburn a shot.
What is the procedure for that? Do I do it after I set origin on the touchscreen? Also, what origin settings do you use in lightburn in the laser menu? Absolute coords? Or user origin?
Honestly, I don’t ever run boundary - I have a ruler and have never had something unexpected happen. I pay attention to where the origin is in Lightburn and line it up carefully.
If you want to give it a shot, going off memory (it’s been some time) get Lightburn connected via USB, and just issue run boundary using the button at the lower right. I think it’s that easy. Don’t be tempted to run the program from there it will fail and probably in a way that leaves the laser on and stopped.
Personally, I use user origin. That matches up with the “set origin” button on the touchscreen when you start a job. Alternatively current position will start from wherever the tool currently is. Absolute coords is also an option if you want to use that so that you can precisely position something in Lightburn if you know where it should be.
Yeah I had the snapmaker connected via USB before. But never tried the boundary options. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks!
I had this happen with the few jobs I tried running from Lightburn. Any idea why the jobs run from Lightburn just stop? I turned off all the power-saving features for the USB ports and made sure my computer wasn’t going to sleep, but that didn’t help.
Has to do with the Snapmaker implementation of the serial buffer being incompatible with what Lightburn expects. Results in the Snapmaker buffer filling up with Lightburn still sending commands.
Lightburn expects to be able to send a certain number of characters regardless of the number of lines of code. Snapmaker stores 3? lines of code with a different max number of characters.
So I’ve gotten more insight in this recently - I can reproduce it by sending a job directly from Lightburn, then stopping the job. Immediately starting the job again will cause it to fail after the first 10ish lines. (I was testing with something that had very little laser power, 10%)
I can then click “Go to Origin” and then successfully run the job.
There’s something quirky with the Snapmaker serial buffer. Something about the G0 X0 Y0 command causes it to reset. It seems not all moves will clear it, for example G91, G0 X1 will not allow the next job to start
As long you “Go To Origin” after a stopped job though it seems to work.