3018 PRO - Setting up your laser 

You are an absolute lifesaver with all these 3018 videos. Need to watch every one of them.

Quite simply the best videos on setting up a 3018. Thanks so much. A lot of great information jammed in these videos. So many headaches and troubles have been put to the wayside.

A perfect post! Very helpful as I add a laser to my home grown DIY CNC machine. The video and the links in the description were a one stop shop for everything I needed. Thanks!

I have to say you do an excellent job of explaining setting up the 3018 pro. I watched your video in setting up the router portion of 3018, and I learned a lot from it. You’ve managed to instruct others in setting up both machines as simple as possible.

I've just spent about 6 hours doing so much of this on my system, only to find you have this channel.... well, I am a believer! Wonderful to find you, and thanks so much for making my life this much easier.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain how to set the laser up. You were easy to follow and also provided the necessary documentation files to calibrate this laser as well! You have conveyed a level of confidence to me! Thanks more that you know!

Thank you so much! This will save me a lot of time, and save my head from over zealous head scratching.

Plummers tape on the threads does a nice job of keeping it in place...cheers!

Honestly cant thank u enough m8. I just bought this machine and it is amazing for the price but could have been very confusing to understand without your videos. your links have been more than helpful and I am now ready to do the tests needed to help me produce its best work possible.

Thanks, i thought before it needs additional accesories for the laser as i've seen from other videos, but this is an eyeopener for me.

Thank you for this video!! And that tip at the end about $32= value was a life saver. I just happened to do a job on a painted tile and had those lines. I had no idea why.... until now. Thank you!!!

hi James. Thanx a lot for fine videoes. I am an headteacher at a secondary school in Odda-Norway. We have a makerspace in our school and have recently bought a cnc machine High-Z-s400 . I am just readin myself up on the instructions but your videoes have allready opened my eyes to know where to start. Thanx.

Excellent videos.I really struggled with the supplied manuals but these are brilliant, clear and explain absolutely everything. Nice work!

Thanks Mr. James, I have been watching your 3018 videos and have gotten a lot of good info. I have the same 3018 pro.

Super! Tutorial is great! I have my CNC 3018 Pro-M with laser 7W! I think you are good at setting my laser! I'm from Germany 🇩🇪! Thank you Mr James! 😁😉👍🏻

As a newbie to Laser Engraving, this video was excellent. Thank You. (As an aside, as an ex-pat from the UK 54 years ago, it was nice to hear your accent again!)

Superb explanation! Could have done with this from day one. Thanks very much, time to start tinkering!

You are amazing, I bought my machine few months ago and since that time I tried to find out how I can use it and I couldn't to be honest. after I saw your videos I was able to use it for the first time :) Thank you and keep going please, I am your fan :)

Followed your tutorial and had no issues at all James. Cheapie 2.5mw laser works well. With your test files, I found that the laser will do what I want at max 60% power with speed at 800 to 900 using MDF.

Best help, Best advice, I was able (FINALLY) to use my 3018 . Thank you So much James, you are the best.

I was totally waiting for this video! Thanks so much!

Huge thanks man! Very awesome video! Already waiting the logo episode.

This video made setting my laser so easy. What started out as itimidating turned out to be quite easy thanks to you!! I have been watching a lot of your videos on cnc machines and you made those easy as well. Thank you so much for making great instructional videos for beginners like me.

Super tutorial Mr. James!

Great video, thanks so much. I was struggling with my variable focus laser and your suggestion to put some teflon tape on the threads was fantastic. Was able to get it focused and it stayed focused. I had given up on getting it to work reliably.

as a newby to 3018 s i was so pleased to find your channel please keep em coming . i was sitting on the fence with should i shoudnt i ?? but your videos gave me the confidence to have a go. ended up getting one and now following vids to try and create a photo. well done thank you

Excellent video. I appreciate this and think that running the laser at 70 to 80 percent was one of the most important points.

Thanks for the great explanations and useful hints!

After 4 days of search at google, you got all my ansearws . Thanks for sharing your knowleage

Great video, many things are covered.

Thank you so very much, that was informative, simple useful and enjoyable - Thank you once again, James

Thank you very very much!!! Your video is great and well exposed. I've just bought a 3018 machine and I will follow your gudes. Ciao Enrico

Thank you very much for great information

What helps a lot for focusing your laser is to focus ur focus on a black copy( comes out completely black. I used this method with a ND: YAG, pulsed lasr. just open the scan platten and leave open. Start a scan of the printer. A copy/scan on the paper will black. Turn laser down, place black paper in lasers path and wala... you can really fine tune the focus.

thank you so much for such a clear and concise video

Genmitsu 3018 and a laser module just like the one you're showing. it didn't initiate, didn't run the fan or fire the laser... turns out the order of wires in the control board is different from the module. The Genmitsu is 12+, PWM, Gnd and the head is 12+, Gnd, PWM. I found the correct end of the connection wire for the head (color coded), and rewired the other end by pressing down on the terminals in the white terminal block with the tip of a knife and shoving/pulling them out, then ordered them by color coding to match the labels on the terminal receptacle on the board. Now it works.

and thank you for these videos helping me tons!

A very nice run through of all the important stuff. I was hoping you'd talk a bit about the adaptive power level (M4 command) that Laser-GRBL uses, because I can't figure out why it makes the G code it does, and I get very inconsistent results with the same power settings in different render modes. Anyway, I have a variable focus module and I figured it would be sensible to set the distance quite long, mainly so that surface level fluctuations would have less effect, but also for smoke reasons. But seeing that yours is set to 20mm - by people who presumably know more than me, I'm wondering if my reasoning is not so sensible ? I feel I should say that MDF (that's what you say you are cutting) supposedly gives off particularly bad gasses when burned, I'm lead to believe much worse than normal wood. I think that maybe deserves a bit more of an emphasis. I do like all those test plots though, very useful resources that are kindly made available - already downloaded them. A tip for people trying to make their laser come on - if your laser has a separate "power supply" module, there is probably a switch on both the laser module and the power supply module. Make sure the laser is mounted safely pointing at something non-shiny before you start hitting the various ON buttons.

Excellent tutorial, thank you.

Thank you!

This tutorial is super useful. Thanks

Brilliant video.

excellent video. very good job!

Hey! Thanks so much for your video, it’s been great. I’ve followed every step and can see the laser but it won’t show up on the wood I’m using. Any suggestions?

This is a great and helpful video! Do I need to put anything under the paper in case the laser cuts through the paper so that it's not hitting the table assembly underneath? Also, I'm working with a 7W laser. Any hints on what settings/configuration I need to adjust for my laser? I'm a complete novice and I'm having some issues getting the settings given in Graham's files to work properly with my laser. Thanks!

All of your videos are so informative and well presented. I've upgraded the bed to 3040, cut my spoilboard, it is surfacing now and just looking at the laser setup that will arrive tomorrow. I have one question that I have not seen addressed. If I have an MDF spoilboard and want to clean cut through my project what can I put between the spoilboard and the workpiece to prevent the laser from setting the spoilboard on fire??

Thank You!

Great tutorial! Every one that I have watched has helped greatly. On this tutorial where you added the custom buttons I had a slight problem. Following the tutorial I clicked on the 2 second laser fire button and nothing happened..... tried the laser on button and again nothing.... perfect- all this work on the machine getting limit switches and homing function working and I end up with a bad laser! Itried one more thing entering the gcode directly. The laser came on as it should... so not the laser- figured it had to be the gcode in the custom button. Right click on the button and choose edit button- the laser is called out using M3, but has no power indicated- leaving it essentially off.... by making that line of code read M3 S50 and then saving it both buttons work as they should now. Again- Thanks for the great tutorials!

In your opinion, is it possible to cut a thin fabric with this laser? Thanks

Hi, me again. I have followed your Grbl set up video followed by this one and both amazingly easy to follow. thank you. However, on this laser focus test i have perfect thin lines from left to right, hardly any variation. (no very thick lines) so i followed the speed test files and the one that comes out best so far is 600mms line and fill. Am i doing something wrong or is this normal? I haven't tried the 500mms yet but the higher i go the worse they get. (started at 800, then 1000, then 1400 and were just getting worse). Does it matter which wood we use? A thousand thank yous and sorry to pick your brain again. :-)

Hello nice video. I just bought a replacement laser head for my “universal laser “ the only problem is that my original laser head has a fix wire set up. 2 for the laser and 2 for fan. The new laser has a four pin connector. How would I go about connecting the new laser head. Can u please help out. Thanks

Hi James im setting up a sovol 5W laser on my 3018c cnc yur you tube tutorial is absolutly spot on. when in laser grbl you set up the importation of command from the c drive.my C drive does not display these special commands. another thing is that my laser is constantly on and obviously burns the plywood by the time i get to set up

Help please, When I switch my machine on the laser instantly works, I cannot find anywhere to switch this on and off. I have the Rattm laser 500. There is one writing on the top that says: SW=0 ON, SW=1 OFF

Great video meets my needs Thankyou. One point tho, I am unable to open the link to Graham Blands guide, is it me or is the link broken?

Well that was Amazing ! Don't know what my wife will say if I buy one though ! Jim

Great video!

Hi James just got a sainsmart PROVer I think there are 2 types of lazer modules the blue one in the video is for PROVer I ordered the other one just wondered if you know if I could use the other one take a look at the sainsmart web site they told me it wasn’t possible with the PROVEr cnc thanks

What a brilliant video thank you

Thanx a lot for such a good video. Greetings from Germany :-)

You used a 15W laser module for this particular video. Up to what watts of the laser module can the control board accept without any modifications or additional parts to the system or set up?

Hi, having some weird results from your laser test files and wondered if you had any ideas. I did the GRBL tuning as per your previous video and it went fine and I did some carving with no problems. I then ran through this laser set up video and again the the focusing section went as planned. When I ran the test filed however this is when things started to go wrong. The lower test 800 and 900 went fine but way to dark so I went up to 1200 and the laser doesn’t do the vertical lines and just burns a series of ‘blobs’ where the fill sections should be and where the darker fills are it just sits there and burns burns burns and then when it does the numbers it just does 12 and not 1200. Any ideas? Thanks Malcolm

my next 3018 PI4 CNC upgrade. know this was coming=]

Thank you very much for the very informative video! I just bought one of the most powerfull solid state lasers on the market as I will use it primarily for cutting. ( plywood a few mm thick). My laser is capable of moveing the Z axis as well. When doing multiple passes for cutting, does laserGRBL have an option for lowering the Z per pass? Or does one have to do this inside the GRBL file generator? Thank you very much for your trouble.

Im doing PCBs by burning off black acrylic paint from my copper board and after a couple of good result I noticed that there is blurred contour that is forming around curved edges which was not there on the first boards. My software is Lightburn and I use 2.5% overscan, 10% power 1000mm/s speed. With more power there seem to be more blurred edges. It is as if the led started to fade out approaching the edge instead of sharply turning off. Did any of you had this issue? I just remembered that I have updated Lightburn recently... I must check of there is a new setting somewhere about it.

Con que programa puedo editar los *.nc paraponermis propios valores? GRACIAS

I found this video while troubleshooting my new laser. It was very helpful because everything seemed right but my laser would not fire under software control. I discovered the 3 wire connector was mismatched. 12V wire was correct but Gnd and TTL were crossed. Lesson: just because the connecter plugs in it doesn't guarantee it's wired correctly :/ This is a very clear and concise video. *****

I have followed your videos on the cnc and so far have done ok, as I’m not computer smart , but your videos are very easy to follow.but now I have a problem we are setting up the laser and I’m to the part to import the buttons, I have downloaded the file but when I open it the buttons aren’t there it is only showing me testing.please help

hello James congratulations for the channel. I have a laser bought on bandgood with power supply and TTL cable can I connect it to the 3018?

hi i have been following this video and found it very helpful. i am a total newby to all of this . I have a vevor 3018 pro and want to do some laser cutting mainly using plywood after many failed attempts i contacted vevor an they told me the laser is not powerful enough and an upgrade would cost £200 so i was wondering if you could recomend a laser that would do the job without breaking the bank

This might be a stupid question, I have a 4030, could you just attach a plate on the side of the spindle mount and leave both installed, or does it have to site in direct center?

Hello James! Thanks for the great videos. I ran the "laser focus test" I could see that the laser fired however no lines were burnt. Any thoughts?

Your videos are so good for helping the beginner. Could you (or anyone else) please tell me where to download the tests from. I don't have any in my LaserGRBL programme. Thank you

Thank you for all your hard work. I am new to the lasers and when I run the test. The Laser comes on and moves but nothing burned on wood any suggestions? Please keep the great content coming.

Can recommend a decent pair of eye protection for the 3018 pro laser thank you

Hello, and thanks for the video, it really helped a lot getting the laser set up! Can you or anybody help me with an issue? I have the very same machine, 3018 pro, and i just can't get it to engrave the full area of my file/image. I tried to modify a number of parameters already, but it will only engrave the outline/edges of my file. The laser basically jumps from side to side, and leaves the center untouched (lazy laser..). How can I get the laser to actually burn the whole area? Thanks in advance!

Awesome Video! Can the 3018 Prover GRBL Controller Board support 20w Laser with no issue or still need connection with extra board?

Can you provide instructions for how you made your custom wood bed in this 3018?

Working on an vector image in LASRGRBL. Seems to jump around the image and does not systematically engrave nearest line....wastes a lot of time for a simple image. Any suggestions to "nearest neighbor" or whatever.

Dear James. What kind of plastic you use for window on your laser box? I am from Serbia and I don't know where to buy this type of plastic for window on my laser box door. Thanks

Hi please i have bought 0.5w laser diode engraver and i use your Tutorial and it work good when i see another one adabt the focus by turn the laser lens right and left after make this it's noo performance i think it make like 10% please help

I watched your video using another power supply using the round plug from the original power supply and plugging into the control board. My new board will not support a 15w laser and will not power it up and having issues with original control board in GRBL laser the sizes are coming out wrong. By powering the board from 24v power supply does the board handle that. Sainsmart says the 3018 Pro board won't support 15w laser and does not have a control board that does for that model. Just trying to get some use out of the laser that came with the 3018 Pro I bought on EBay. Any ideas or advice. I have a 300w Spindle and mount and power supply that looks much like the one you use in the video. Great info from you in the past hope you can help me get the laser going again. Thanks

Its helpful, thnx man

Hello. I have the CNC 3018 machine. How do you change the settings in console from engraver to laser engraver please.... Jay

Hi James. Thanks for all your videos on the cnc machine, it's really helped me. I have question on the inventables software. The bit moves as it should but does not spin. On the basic software I downloaded from you it does spin. Any ideas what I am doing wrong. Thanks

yay lots of good in this vid :)

Thank you so much! :D

When I try to load the optional button it says its corrupt on not there? Please advise.

Awesome stuff. BTW, SainSmart laser modules are discontinued. It just happens I'm shopping for a diode laser module for my Vevor 3018 Pro. I haven't been able to see any of those 20W 4-diode setups like on the xTool D1 Pro yet.

how this focal and speed test move to linuxcnc, and what laser u use, TTL or PWM how connect. ttl and pwm.

Amazing videos tanks you very much, i don’t have the spindle settings in my g code the $30 that you changed does not show in my settings

Great video, thanks. I have my laser attached alongside the router so I don't have to recalibrate between routing and burning. Have you any tips for how to switch the router off and the laser on (or the other way around) so the M3 command only switches one or the other? I'd hope some sort of mode command but I've no idea. Maybe something with the $32=1 command? Any thoughts that even hint at the right direction would be awesome.

James Im a newby to this and have followed your instructions BUT, it appears my CNC is not moving in the Z axis when running your configuration test programs. My laser is a variable focus so Ive set it as best I can. When running the speed test it burns the single dots but the lines are all on top of those same dots. Any ideas ??? Z axis has been enabled in LaserGRBL settings and works manually

Hello James, I have been viewing all of your videos regarding setting up my Foxalien 20w Laser and I downloaded Grahams Files and tried running the Laser Focus Test and for some reason most times it doesn't turn the laser on and also watching the indicating in LaserGRBL it seems to get stuck on the second line at the bottom and the rest of the lines are over top of this one. The longer lines at the top going as expected, without the laser coming on of course. I can Manually activate the laser with the buttons, so I know my power and connections are correct. Any idea how I can resolve this?

The best video

What could be the reason for my laser not turning on when starting the job? -20w FoxAlien -LaserGRBL -Laser Focus Test I have imported the extra menu buttons and can turn the laser on/off with the 'eye' icon and do the '2sec' test (although it is more of a half second). The first line test I ran worked as expected but the laser isn't coming on for the rest. I got it to come on by clicking the 'laser mode on' button but even that has failed a number of times and the laser goes through the motions but no beam. Any ideas?

Hi James, 1. I want to fit my 3018(Cronos Maker) with a laser module, 40W should do it (5-6mm ply, 3mm acryl) Bur why do I often read of 5W lasers? Is it the difference between input and (pure) output power? And can the Maker provide the power? After nearly 40 years of living in Germany I never thought I would enjoy a Brummi accent. Living in Germany has taught me to appreciate all regional accents unlike Downton Abbey Britain

1st for the mame... 2nd, yes, I have a CNC, of course! Thanks for the great video!

Do you have a video showing how to install the laser head into a masuter pro?

thanks again...great instructive video.

just bought the 40w in 15w out laser and will be arriving tomorrow. my 3018 came with the 500 mw and i couldnt believe i could actually do anything with a half watt laser. from what ive heard and seen you dont want the focal point exactly on the surface you want 1-1.5mm below the surface.