How easy is it to switch software in Chinese laser?

[Adam Less]

I have a J. Weike L6040N (60W) Chinese laser. Before I start getting replies to this post slamming Chinese lasers or telling me I should be a domestic one and I wouldn't be asking this question, I LOVE my laser, it works great and I am fine using LaserCut software! I am just exploring whether or not there is a better alternative that's easy to switch over to.

One of the issues I have is I use an old PC laptop, 32bit with Windows 7 because the LaserCut software requires it. It doesn't help that my laptop is garbage. I have other laptops, including a PC version with current Windows installed and a newer Macbook Pro. But I can't use those with LaserCut because it's PC based and requires 32bit (so Windows 7).

I have briefly looked at LaserBurn and LaserWeb. The latter is open source I believe. LaserBurn offers both Mac and PC versions and suggests it may work for my machine but I'm not sure. I know I can 'change the controller' as their site suggests, to one that does work with their software if by chance the controller I have doesn't, but that sounds tricky and I'd rather not break what ain't broken. So I'm hoping to find something I can switch to seamlessly that will allow me to use one of my faster laptops (PC or Mac) and that won't screw up my laser and/or require any hardware/controller changes.

Anyone have any thoughts or any experience with this?

[Bill George]

I have a Chinese laser, about 2 years old runs just fine on Windows 7 Pro which is 64 bit. The Chinese software for the Laser is really just a means to send something you have created in say Corel Draw and Exported to your Laser Software and to feed the machine a file via USB. Thats the way it works.

[Jacob John]

I have a Chinese laser, about 2 years old runs just fine on Windows 7 Pro which is 64 bit. The Chinese software for the Laser is really just a means to send something you have created in say Corel Draw and Exported to your Laser Software and to feed the machine a file via USB. Thats the way it works.

Bill, with that said, what's stopping you from using, say, Job Control, to drive another laser? Is it coded a certain way to prevent it?

[Bill George]

Bill, with that said, what's stopping you from using, say, Job Control, to drive another laser? Is it coded a certain way to prevent it?

Huh? Who said anything about Job Control and this is a Chinese laser, no Job Control here.

[Bill Carruthers]

Adam - I'm not positive but depending on your controller model - Ruida? Leetro? Etc. - you might be able to use Lightburn - it's brilliant now and improving every day - there is a free trial at https://lightburnsoftware.com/pages/trial-version-try-before-you-buy - and it runs on win7- 32 or 64 just fine; also runs on Mac and linux. Has great support answered in English on their Facebook page almost instantaneously - It will become the only software you need before too long - I'm already doing 95% of my design work in it -only rarely needing to get back to Coreldraw - also has built in trace feature which is as good as vector magic was - and their photo dithering setup gives me results as good as Photograv - albeit with more tweaking and experimenting sometimes involved, and it's only $80.00 for a license with 1 year of updates. Just ascertain what controller you are using and see if they support it - if not they are adding to the list of supported controllers regularly.

[Jacob John]

Huh? Who said anything about Job Control and this is a Chinese laser, no Job Control here.

Haha, I guess I could have been clearer. It was a hypothetical. If the software is simply a path to the laser, would it be possible to use another software than EZCad to drive the laser? Like light burn for instance

[Adam Less]

Adam - I'm not positive but depending on your controller model - Ruida? Leetro? Etc. - you might be able to use Lightburn - it's brilliant now and improving every day - there is a free trial at https://lightburnsoftware.com/pages/trial-version-try-before-you-buy - and it runs on win7- 32 or 64 just fine; also runs on Mac and linux. Has great support answered in English on their Facebook page almost instantaneously - It will become the only software you need before too long - I'm already doing 95% of my design work in it -only rarely needing to get back to Coreldraw - also has built in trace feature which is as good as vector magic was - and their photo dithering setup gives me results as good as Photograv - albeit with more tweaking and experimenting sometimes involved, and it's only $80.00 for a license with 1 year of updates. Just ascertain what controller you are using and see if they support it - if not they are adding to the list of supported controllers regularly.

I checked with Lightburn and it looks like I have a Leetro controller. They don't support Leetro yet but will be. It could be up to a yead but that's fine. I'll wait. I tried their demo on my Mac and while I couldn't do it online (connected to my laser), offline it was terrific!

[Bill George]

Haha, I guess I could have been clearer. It was a hypothetical. If the software is simply a path to the laser, would it be possible to use another software than EZCad to drive the laser? Like light burn for instance

EZCad is for a fiber laser.

[Lee DeRaud]

One of the issues I have is I use an old PC laptop, 32bit with Windows 7 because the LaserCut software requires it. It doesn't help that my laptop is garbage. I have other laptops, including a PC version with current Windows installed and a newer Macbook Pro. But I can't use those with LaserCut because it's PC based and requires 32bit (so Windows 7).Typically, when someone says "requires 32-bit", the actual application software could care less, but there are no 64-bit drivers available for the hardware interface. Not (usually) a problem for USB, but there are still odd bits of controller hardware out there that use parallel interfaces, for which 64-bit drivers don't exist. (Or at least didn't exist last I checked.)

Is that what's going on here? If so, it would likely require a controller upgrade to fix.

[Kev Williams]

Virtual machine...

I have a old Dell Precision T5600 with an 8-core cpu, 32gigs of ram running 64bit Win7 Enterprise...

My GCC Explorer requires a 32bit computer for its driver. I put a 32bit XP virtual machine on the Dell (via VirtualBox, NOT the built-in MS version), and the driver works just fine on the XP. I allotted the VM 5 gigs of ram, and it's stupid fast.

You could also just use a 32bit Win7 as the VM...

[Lee DeRaud]

Virtual machine...

I have a old Dell Precision T5600 with an 8-core cpu, 32gigs of ram running 64bit Win7 Enterprise...

My GCC Explorer requires a 32bit computer for its driver. I put a 32bit XP virtual machine on the Dell (via VirtualBox, NOT the built-in MS version), and the driver works just fine on the XP. I allotted the VM 5 gigs of ram, and it's stupid fast.(scratches head) Ok, I'll bite: what does a 32-bit machine (real or virtual) do with >4GB of RAM?

[Justin Stark]

I use Light Burn and it's not bad. I wish it had a few more features but I use Corel and import files to Lightburn. I never used LaserCut that came with my G Weike

[Kev Williams]

(scratches head) Ok, I'll bite: what does a 32-bit machine (real or virtual) do with >4GB of RAM?

probably nothing, it's just where I set the slider ;) -- but it is stupid fast, everything it does is instantaneous, unlike every other computer I own.