Definitive guide for Lightburn?

[ctdodge (Stan)]

I have a Shapeoko 3XXL and I just purchased a Jtech 7W laser kit for it. I haven’t installed the laser yet but before I do I’m trying to find a consistent description of GRBL settings that need to be changed when using Lightburn…

From what I can tell I need:
$30=255
$31=0
$32=1
$10=0
G10 L2 P1 X-812 Y-812

Is that everything? And I think I need to reset when I use CNC so I would have:
$32=0
G10 L2 P1 X0 Y0
$10=1
Is this correct?

So it would make sense to have a “Use Laser” macro that does the first set and a “Use CNC” macro that would do the second set?

Please let me know if this should cover it.

Thanks
Stan

[Julien]

Yep, creating two macros in LightBurn is exactly what I did, see

Laser settings on shapeoko

Yes, the macro needs to have at least three lines in it. one line for setting $32 to 1 one line for setting $10 to 0 one line for adjusting G10 L2 P1 coordinates Here’s a copy/paste of the text in my “Configure for laser” macro. I have one extra line for setting $20 to 0, which disables soft limits: in my setup I was getting errors when soft limits were enabled, so I added that line, it won’t necessarily be required for you) $32=1; enable laser mode $10=0 ; to get positions displayed as posi…

Minor differences with your post:

• it’s not actually required to change $30 to 255 (and $31 to 0), you can just tell LightBurn what your max spindle RPM value is and it will scale the laser intensity according to that. In the “Device Settings for GRBL” menu, just set the “S-value max” to whatever your original $30 value is (mine is 24000 because I have a spindle, yours may be 1000 since as far as I recall this is the default value set by Carbide Motion upon configuring the Shapeoko). Anyway, changing it to 255 will also work (that’s the defaut S-value in LightBurn), and if your don’t have a spindle you don’t even need to revert it back to anything else afterwards (it’s just cleaner to do so)
• $10=0 is correct for laser mode, but I believe the correct (or at least original) value to restore is 255, not 1, for CNC mode.