Laser not turning off during travel

CAD & CAM Tool Chain LaserWeb/CNCWeb Suppport
1

Hey, I’m fairly new to the CNC world. This is my first experience with a laser engraver. I bought a cheap Eleksmaker clone from eBay and it came entirely without software. The meager instructions referenced using Benbox, so I took a few days of searching to come up with how to do that.

That searching led me to Laserweb, which appears FAR more user powerful than Benbox. I flashed grbl 1.1f to the controller board and got things hooked up to Laserweb. I’m using the Generic GRBL machine setup with a few modifications for machine size and laser test power and such.

So far, things are going mostly well. I’m using a simple Inkscape created .svg logo for vector testing, and it draws the image beautifully, except, the laser doesn’t turn off for travels. There are only 4 strokes in the image, set to full power (S1000.00) at 1000mm/m. The travels are marked in green on the preview and simulation, but when I look at the raw gcode, it never sends a signal to turn off the laser, only a new command to turn it on to full before the start of the next stroke. I saved the gcode to a file, and manually inserted laser off commands (S0.00) before each go to command at the start of each stroke, and the image came out perfectly as I expected it to look.

What am I doing incorrectly to prevent those from being automatically inserted?

2

This sounds like you probably forgot to set grbl to laser mode by sending $32=1. This makes grbl to only switch the laser on during G1, G2 or G3 moves, but off on G0.

3 Likes
3

Please check the LaserWeb Initial Configuration:
https://laserweb.yurl.ch/documentation/initial-configuration/31-grbl-1-1e

4

@AardvarkSagus Please do let us know whether the suggestion solved the problem for you, thanks!

5

Thank you! This absolutely was the issue. Files are definitely working now, as well as dynamic power around curves. The only issue now is that things that used to etch beautifully at 100% power and 1000mm/m now require me to slow down to 150mm/m to get a mostly solid line.

If this is something I simply have to deal with, will do. But I am going to continue looking for a solution there as well. Thank you so much for helping my stupidity with that initial config though.

6

Thanks for following up. I’d suggest opening a new topic for the next question. :slight_smile: