Hey Dudes and Dudettes! After waiting a month, I finally received my VigoTec Laser, 20W (5.5 Output). Uhh, initial impressions were pretty slick, its well built and looks good. That’s basically where the dream stops and becomes a nightmare…
Drivers installed directly to my laptop from their website, my laptop wont recognize the Laser is even plugged in, although it makes the sound when I slip the cord into the USB slot. If I try and use their VIGO software and connect via Onboard Wifi Hotspot, which is trash, it crashes every time I try and upload a DXF or Jpeg. There is absolutely 0 Customer Support, and seemingly very little robust knowledge of the machine.
LightBurn will not recognize the machine either and I’m currently stuck with a cool $200 paper weight. All I wanna do is cut cool wooden projects out for the kids haha Absolutely any help will be immensely appreciated!!!
EDIT: Downloaded LaserGRBL and it also is having issues locating the laser via USB. Uninstalled and Reinstalled the Drivers straight through that software as well.
Sounds like credit card protection might come in handy for getting money back? That might be a net win since solid state lasers at that power probably aren’t going to succeed in cutting out wooden projects unless the wood is very thin.
You might see this recent post for reference with a very similar unit:
I had a 7w diode laser mounted on my CNC for a few years. From that experience, the fastest I could cut 3.9mm ply was 3mm/s with three passed (dropping down Z .5mm each pass)
Can you see the laser as a COM Port in the device manager (DM)?
To be sure, look at the DM before plugging the machine on the USB port, then plug it and try to see any difference. If there is no difference, then you need to install a USB driver. To know which one, you must find the reference of the USB to TTL IC component on the machine’s electronic board. Maybe it’s a CH340, maybe another one such as CP2102.
If you are unsure, post a picture of the board.
Also, if it’s this one maybe you can also access it by WiFi, the main IC on the board looks like an ESP8266 or an ESP32, from Espressif.
EDIT: Okay, so I open the Device Manager and found it connecting to COM5. I got LaserGRBL to connect and accept the laser. I got a program to start and run. HUGE PROGRESS! I don’t know what you had me do, but it works! lol… now the downside is LaserGRBL keeps freezing and not responding and I cannot figure out how to adjust the laser settings, that may be a software problem not a hardware problem. “$$” brings up all the giblets but doesn’t allow me to change them.
I will check that out, I haven’t checked that yet, didn’t even realize it was a thing. The wifi lets me connect my phone, but the app is absolutely awful, you can’t resize images or really do much editing. That’s when it DOES work, and it works almost as little as the computer program. If I could get this thing to connect and run, I imagine I’ll be very pleased with it lol
Check out the notes on the LaserGRBL web site concerning the VX7. Apparently, Vigotec used a proprietary interface instead of standard GRBL. http://lasergrbl.com/configuration/
This page includes some links to potential remedies. I would like to use LaserGRBL but have been unable to connect so far.