Driving your Longmill with Lightburn vs gSender

Just started watching the livestreams. Show of hands, are your using Lightburn to connect and drive/run your Longmill vs gSender?

During livestream #2 I got a bit frustrated watching the host create and save gcode vs just running from Lightburn. And the extra busy work of positioning and confirming in gSender seemed unnecessary. Also changing speed and power are available “on the fly” in Lightburn. And if you changed on the fly and confident in your change you can “stop”, make the changes in the settings and start again without saving gcode and having to re-open in gSender.

@Scott1 For projects that I create in LB, I run in LB. I see no benefit to exporting gcode and using gSender to run it. For laser toolpaths that I create in VCarvePro, I run them in gSender.

I use LB for photos but VCarve and gSender for everything else, probably because I’m already proficient at designing in Vectric. LB does a better job with photos IMHO but I can’t get any zeroing method to work in LB so I always use start from current position.

My machine has a dedicated CAM PC that runs G-Sender. I use a remote g-sender in a browser on my CAD PC to upload and start toolpaths. Something I believe I cannot do with LB.

For me, using LB would be steps extra: uploading the files to my cload and downing them into LB at the machine, vs. directly upping them to the machine from the office.

I do, however, use LB on my CAD side to align and measure material position and size on the machine via the powerful camera option LB has. Unlocking that was a game changer for designing directly on a stock picture in VCarve.

I’ve tried LB to connect directly but got confused with it starting all over the place and no clear jogging options (too lazy to find out how to activate those). So I opted for the more dedicated software, as I save the toolpaths anyway.

I am eyeballing the vcarve laser-toolpath option, but I also doubt it would mitigate the alligning carve-laser problem I already have a workaround for.

But it’s nice to have secondary software to test the machine with if problems arise, and I need to make sure it’s not a software problem. LB is an irreplaceable tool in my arsenal, but not for running the machine.

I use LightBurn for the laser and gSender for everything else.