This is the one we have been working towards for a long time. Until now, ImagR ended where your laser software began: you prepared the picture here, downloaded the file, opened LightBurn or LaserGRBL, imported it, set up the job, and only then pressed Start. As of today, that whole detour is optional.
One Click and Easy Mode can now send the finished picture straight to your laser, from the browser, over the USB cable. Connect the machine, set speed and power, position the head, press Start. That is the entire workflow.
It is a beta feature. It already works on a lot of machines, it has already produced a good number of finished engravings out in the wild, and it is not finished. This post explains what it does, what it needs, where its limits are, and where to tell us when something goes wrong.
Where to find it
Prepare a picture in One Click or Easy Mode as usual. On the last step, above the download options (PNG, BMP, LightBurn), there is a new tile: Engrave your image directly, marked Beta feature. Click it and the engrave panel opens right underneath.
The download options are still there and still work exactly as before. Nothing has been taken away.
What you need
- A computer, not a phone or tablet. The picture goes to the laser over the USB cable, so ImagR has to run on the computer the laser is plugged into.
- Chrome, Edge or Firefox. These browsers are allowed to talk to a USB device. Safari is not, and there is nothing we can do about that from our side.
- An https connection, which you already have on imag-r.com.
- Your laser switched on and connected by USB - and, this is the big one, no other laser program running. More on that below.
Which machines work
The feature talks to two families of controllers.
GRBL - this covers the large majority of diode lasers. We recognise a number of machines automatically and set up their orientation for you:
- xTool D1 / D1 Pro, xTool S1
- Sculpfun S9, S10 / S30
- Atomstack A5 / X7
- Ortur Laser Master 2 Pro, Laser Master 3
- NEJE Max 4
- Longer Ray5
- TwoTrees TS2
Machines that are not in that list still work - GRBL is GRBL. The difference is that ImagR does not know which way their axes run, so it asks you once to click Check orientation: the head moves 10 mm, you answer one question ("did it move towards you or away from you?"), and the setting is remembered for that machine. Machines we have seen engrave successfully this way include the Creality Falcon2, several MKS DLC32 based lasers and the Blaze X M3.
Ruida - the DSP controllers found in most CO2 machines. Ruida works differently from GRBL: the whole job is handed over to the controller, which then runs it on its own, and you set the start position on the machine's own panel (the Origin key) rather than in ImagR. It works, but it has had far fewer hours of real-world testing than GRBL, so treat it as the more experimental half of the feature.
If you have a machine that is not on the list, please tell us how it went - see the bottom of this post. That is how the list grows.
What the panel does
- Connect - one click, then pick your laser in the small window the browser shows. From then on the panel shows the machine name (if we recognise it) and the size of its work area.
- Engraving settings - speed and maximum power, in mm/min or mm/s, whichever you are used to. Dithered pictures are engraved in on/off mode; greyscale pictures use variable power, and you can also set a minimum power for the lightest greys.
- Cut the piece out - optionally cut along a rectangle or along the outline of the subject once the engraving is done, with its own speed, power and number of passes.
- Position - a preview of the work area with your job on it, a jog cross to move the head, Set origin here, and Trace the frame, which drives the head around the outline of the job with the laser off so you can see exactly where it will land.
- Start engraving - with a progress bar, an estimated time, and a large STOP button that switches the laser off and drives the head back to where it started.
- A technical log at the bottom, folded away. You will normally never need it, but if something goes wrong, it is the first thing we will ask about.
While a job is running, you can switch to other tabs or windows. The only thing you must not do is close the page - that stops the laser part way through.
What to keep in mind
Close your other laser software before you connect. LightBurn, LaserGRBL, the program that came with the laser - all of them hold on to the USB port while they are open, and a laser can only be connected to one program at a time. If the panel tells you that your laser is still connected to another program, that is what it means. Close that program completely and click Connect again. This is by far the most common reason for a failed connection, so it is worth checking first every single time.
Stay at the machine. The usual rules do not change because the file did not come from LightBurn: eye protection on, something to put out a fire within reach, and do not leave the room. A fire starts in seconds.
The job starts where the head is. ImagR does not home the machine first. Wherever the head is standing when you press Start, that is the corner of your picture. Use the jog buttons and Trace the frame to make sure it lands where you want it.
Check the first result. If the engraving comes out mirrored or upside down, that is the orientation setting - open the machine settings (the gear icon) and tick Mirror horizontally or Flip vertically, or run Check orientation. ImagR remembers the choice for that machine.
Power and speed are yours to set. ImagR does not know your material. Start with the values you would use in LightBurn for the same job.
Known limitations
This is a beta, and we would rather list the rough edges than have you find them:
- Not every machine has been tested. GRBL machines we have never seen usually work, but "usually" is the honest word. Ruida has had less testing than GRBL.
- A job can stop part way through. We have seen a controller reset mid-job on one machine, and a job that could not start because the head was too close to the end of its travel. When that happens, the panel says so, STOP works as it should, and the details reach us automatically - which is exactly how those cases got fixed.
- One picture at a time. The panel engraves the picture you just prepared, at the size you set. Placing several pictures on the bed, adding text or shapes, or cutting arbitrary vectors is a different tool, and that is a separate story.
- GRBL streams line by line from the browser. If your computer goes to sleep or the browser is closed, the job stops. A laptop on battery with an aggressive sleep timer is not a good idea for a two-hour engraving.
- This feature does not exist on phones, tablets or Safari. If you open the panel there, it tells you so and points you to the download instead.
Why we are releasing it now
Because it works, and because the fastest way to make it work on your machine is to have you try it. Every connection attempt, every job and every abort sends its technical details to us automatically - not your picture, just what the controller said and what the panel did. Several of the fixes in the current version came straight out of those reports, from people we have never spoken to. The more machines it sees, the better it gets.
Something didn't work? Please post here.
If the feature did anything other than what you expected - it would not connect, it stopped, the result came out wrong, the head hit something, or it simply did not do what this post promised - reply in this thread. It helps enormously if you include:
- Your laser model (and the controller, if you know it)
- The Run ID shown in the engrave panel after the job - it lets us find the exact technical log for your run
- What happened, in one or two sentences
- A photo of the result, if there is one - for "too light" or "mirrored" that says more than any log
We read every reply here. Thank you to everyone who tested this before today - you know who you are, and the feature is what it is because of you.
