As I opened the box of my new A350 and the Enclosure and saw the amazing packing and organization, I said: “Wow! Someone put some real thought into this!”
As I turned the pages of the full color, bound instruction manual to build the unit and enclosure, I thought: “Wow! Someone put some real thought into this!”
As I affixed the different process heads and beds and did the initial calibration, I thought: “Wow! Someone put some real thought into this!”
And then I downloaded and tried to use this Luban garbage for the first time. I instantly thought: “Did no one even think about the software???”
Nothing is intuitive or easy to use. I really want to mainly use the laser function of the machine and was quite excited about the camera capture and being able to center my work on the material without trying to figure out origins and everything like that. Why does the entire captured surface of the machine appear in the upper right quadrant of the workspace though?? I can zoom in on it, but can’t seem to move it to center it. If that’s the entire machine bed, why doesn’t it take up the entire workspace?
The first time it opened, I saw the small icons to let you choose between “B&W”, “Grayscale”, “Vector”, & “Text”, but then I loaded an object and they are gone now. Can’t find them anywhere?? This behavior persists if I close and reopen the program. I have no idea where they went or how to change the engraving method.
I know the easy answer is “use Lightburn” or some other software. But to my knowledge, Lightburn won’t support the camera in the SnapMaker head. I really want to use the camera capture function.
Why wasn’t there a focus on this software during the R&D phase? Surely there wasn’t a ton to figure out on the hardware side since they basically made this printer in an earlier generation and just added some features. Why hasn’t this company focused on the software that could really set them apart instead of driving people to use other software available. And if they don’t want to develop software, start partnering with software companies like Lightburn to get things like your camera supported.
Just about everyone, given the comments on this forum. Although it’s cold comfort, you’re not alone.
You say surely that wasn’t what happened, but that’s exactly what did happen. The results speak for themselves. The software is far worse than the hardware.
I agree with you that Luban has still a long way to go to became something usable.
Regarding this (the same happened to me), those options depend on the type of file you are importing into Luban. They appear, for example, with .png files, but not with .svg ones.
Crazy how frustrating and bad this software is. Great hardware. I am also more into using the CNC and Laser as the output from a Prusa still rules in the 3D print world. Where is the documentation for that right click to move center? Just when I thought a company got the manual and software…nope.
I´m also bit disappointed by the software.
Bought it for Laser engraving and CNC.
It´s not really intuitive. I worked with professional machines before and there it was pretty easy to find the right parameters for engraving, paper, leather, wood etc. in a reasanable time…
Let´s say within 30-45 min testing different settings you where good to go. Also cause there was kind of an Library which gave you an idea about basic settings. Paper that thick you will need that power that speed to cut or to engrave… for leather that for wood that …
Here theres no library at all. The one page you find in the internet seem to be pretty outdated and from snapmaker 1.0 ?
It´s not really working for me.
I find it really hard to find good parameters also vs. engraving time…
To be clear - this is not a professional machine. It is a hobbyists machine, albeit a multipupose one. It doesn’t excel at any of the 3 functions it does, at least not without practice and trial and error. It is a machine which does what its told with the parameters it is given.
Mods and fine tuning to make it better is our goal in the community.
It would be nice to have more guidance on how to do things, but alot of it is the community figuring things out together.
Try to cruise the forum for some information - its amazing what information awaits you in here if you search around. Or if you have some specific question not addressed, ask it!
This is just my opinion.
There is no question that luban needs some work though. Trying to master three different approaches to fabrication in one machine has a lot aspects to cover.
to be fair, with the laser at least, there is a lot of variation because of material, even if they are “the same” that a professional machine (with a more powerful laser/ better optics) would not show as much. for instance i have bought 2 packs of 3mm plywood, same vendor same item. but when i switched packages i needed to adjust all of my settings (quite a lot actually) because the second pack i could not cut through. because of variations in the amount of glue, color of the wood, and moisture content.
that said, the software and documentation really needs improvement. i have seem many people try to create better documentation for this machine but none of them seemed to gain much traction
Yep, I’ve used Simplify3D, Cura, Chitubox, you name it, I’ve used it and Luban is one of the crappiest slicers I’ve seen. You are absolutely right, I opened the Snapmaker box and was delighted to see such a nice manual, packaging and quality product. This being my 16th 3D printer. I’ve never seen such crappy software as Luban. Clumsy, featureless - it’s just a rip off of the open Chitubox software. I use the Snapmaker primarily for 3D printing, so I just use Simplify3D that supports it. It’s what we use for all our other printers anyway. Simplify3D is well worth the small purchase price. But for the Laser and CNC functions, I guess we’re going to be stuck with the crummiest software I’ve ever seen. Come on Snapmaker - get it together. You got millions of dollars from Kickstarter, use some of it on the software.
They got their hands full in trying to keep getting things leveled off, software included.
3dp in luban is cura based.
Now, with that said
you can use lightburn for laser and fusion360 with some tinkering for the cnc.
there are other options too i am sure, but those are the go tos.
luban is meant for a total noob beginner to get started, and not so much for mastering. this is evident by the intentional lack of features stripped out of the 3dp because i dont think cura has ever had a release with such limited functionality. could be wrong though.
it does need work, and would be great if it was awesome, and maybe someday it will… but thats the reality of the situation.
I don’t know why they can’t integrate other software that can be connected to run the Snapmaker machines. I have a stand alone laser and I can use several different software to operate it. I prefer Lightburn and it has all I need from design to completion. I have designed in Lightburn then imported to Inkscape and converted to SVG then to Luban to gcode. Very time consuming.
Lightburn can be used and it’s obviously awesome software, but the one real shining point for the laser is the camera capture and being able to set up your piece on the actual canvas (without doing that nonsense of moving the laser around in a square and then trying to judge where the canvas should go). Last I checked, Lightburn didn’t support the Snapmaker’s camera (although I admit it’s been a while so correct me if this has changed). If Snapmaker worked with Lightburn to get camera support, and just got out of the software business altogether, they would be better off.
The camera is still not working on Lightburn. We are using the WiFi connection to transfer the image, so it is hard to use on Lightburn. But that is a good suggestion.
