Commonly used in 3D printers, home-built CNC machines and kit-style or DIY lasers. Often used in open-frame diode lasers made by:

• Ortur
• xTool
• AtomStack
• TwoTrees
• Neje
• FoxAlien
• EleksMaker
• Shapeoko
• 3018 CNC machines
• ...and many others

Supported control boards

• Any board running GRBL or Marlin firmware.
• Cohesion 3D Mini or Laserboard
• Smoothieboard

LightBurn does not support the M2 Nano controller that comes stock in most K40 lasers. However, many replacement control boards for the K40 laser are compatible with this version of LightBurn.

Common in more industrial-grade machines, these use proprietary hardware, firmware, and software. They are usually enclosed in a plastic case, and often have a separate LCD display panel with buttons. If your machine is a CO2 laser in a metal enclosure and has an LCD display, chances are you need the DSP version.

Supported control boards

• Ruida
• Trocen
• TopWisdom

The DSP version of LightBurn also supports all devices in the GCode base license, so if you have both types, you only need the DSP license.

Galvo lasers, also commonly called fiber lasers, use a fixed scanning head mounted to an arm, and project the beam from above. They are used for high-speed marking or engraving, and may have a fiber laser source for metals, a CO2 laser source for marking woods, or, less commonly, a UV source.

LightBurn currently supports fiber, CO2, and UV Galvo lasers connected with a USB cable and running EzCad2 or EzCad2 Lite. If you have such a laser you can purchase a LightBurn license for Galvo.

Not yet supported: BSL, EZCAD3, etc.

LightBurn will work forever as long as you have your license key, but after a year you will need to renew the maintenance on your license to keep getting the latest features and updates.

The license key has an expiry date for updates: one year from when you first activate it. When it expires, it's still valid, you just don't get updates any more. If you download a version of LightBurn released after that date, it won't work, but any version released before the key expired will continue to work.

Yes. You can add an unlimited number of lasers to LightBurn. LightBurn supports three classes of laser: GCode, DSP, and Galvo. If you want to add a machine of a different class than the one you have now, you may need to upgrade your license.

Visit: https://lbrn.info/add-dsp to add DSP machines to an existing license, and https://lbrn.info/add-galvo to add Galvo machines to an existing license.

To access the license portal, go to http://lightburn.cryptlex.app

If it's your first time using the portal, see https://lbrn.info/manage-license for how to set it up.

If you still have access to the old computer, you can deactivate it following these instructions: https://lbrn.info/move-license.

Or you can use the License Portal to manage your activations, as explained here: https://lbrn.info/manage-license

Yes! Go to 'Help > License Management' from the menu in LightBurn, then save the file it generates to your computer, and email it, along with your License Key, to Support@LightBurnSoftware.com

Note: offline activating a trial is not possible. A network connection is required exactly once to activate a trial.

Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 specifically)

You can learn about LightBurn through our YouTube channel as well as our documentation and our forum.

We do, and it's a very active community of laser hobbyists and pros alike. See for yourself at https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/.