Definitive guide for Lightburn?

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

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.