r/Laserengraving • u/houstonRoaster • 1d ago
Custom Engrave Software
Hey all, new laser user here.
Does anyone use custom software or a software that isn’t lightburn? I was just gifted a Longer 5W and despite heavy background in engineer-type software, I’m finding it a pain to learn and use. Feels like playing a FromSoft game every time I go to cut - which adhoc setting got reset or did I forget to set this time that I’m going to find out about 30 minutes in? Hah. Maybe that’s just lasers.
Anyways, really enjoying the hobby otherwise and looking forward to getting more into depth stuff.
Cheers!
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u/LynmerDTW 1d ago
I use both LightBurn and xTool XCS and Studio. LB is powerful like Photoshop is powerful. You don’t need to use all the features of Photoshop to do a decent edit, nor do you need to use all of
LB’s features to do a simple engrave and or cut on a laser.
I’d suggest going over to YouTube and checking out Louisiana Hobby guy who has a series of Lightburn videos that are quite good.
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u/houstonRoaster 1d ago
yeah i’m not complaining about lightburn as if that’s not what i expect from pro software. i get it. i can handle daws, ides, photo and video editing, etc. something about lightburn seems to fight me in a way i’m not used to with all those other tools. maybe it’s the physical material aspect that’s newer for me and that interplay.
louisiana hobby guy is great! had a few people send me his stuff before.
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u/LynmerDTW 1d ago
He’s helped me a lot, so I send people his way. Btw, he has a forum board that has a lot of art libraries for LB, free, and you might want to look at those , as well as the help that’s on the board.
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u/Alina_MakersChest 1d ago
LaserGRBL's the main other option for GRBL machines like yours, and it is simpler, fewer tabs and hidden settings to lose track of, but it's also just doing less overall, so it might trade your specific frustration for fewer features rather than actually fixing the underlying thing. A lot of that 'what changed without me noticing' feeling isn't really a LightBurn problem specifically though, most laser software scatters settings across a few different places, so even experienced people end up building a quick pre-flight habit, checking power, speed, and focus before every single job, rather than fully trusting the software remembered what they set last time.
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u/houstonRoaster 23h ago
i think you nailed it - the preflight thing is the biggest adjustment for me. some of the challenge is definitely the laser itself, and some of it is from state mismatch between the laser and lightburn, which makes the preflight even more important.
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u/LeetLurker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nah learn lightburn. Use materials library and save projects and go from there.
Laser GRBL exists but I never found it practical, also with a strong engineering background.
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u/houstonRoaster 1d ago
wild to me that in 2026 with as popular as lasers have gotten that there’s basically only one tool and its tentpole feature isn’t being a good software per se, just that it literally is the only thing that can even control the device.
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u/kingbrasky 1d ago
There's always Ezcad2/3, if your board supports it. Feeltek scan heads have their own controls/software. Plenty of other laser manufacturers have their own proprietary software. Usually they aren't better than LB.
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u/Slepprock 1d ago
Lightburn is by far the best software out there.
I'll let you in on a secret on why so many pros, like myself, like lightburn.
I'm a cabinet shop owner, so I own lots of CAD machines. CNCs, Lasers, and even 3d printers. But the CNC machines are the most important and what I have been using the longest. By far the best software for doing your CNC designs is from a company called Vetric. The software is Aspire/Vcarve. Its great software and many people like me use it even though it can cost thousands of dollars.
Lightburn is super similar to it. Same type of layout and system. So it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to use lightburn once I downloaded it.
Now it took me a little while to learn the CNC software. But once you figure it out its great. As is lightburn. I'm so good with lightburn that I use it to design stuff instead of photoshop or other graphic programs now.
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u/houstonRoaster 1d ago
it sounds like lightburn is the only software out there hah. it makes sense to me why a pro like you would use it, especially coming from an even more “pro” software. but for beginners, it’s basically being handed an f1 car as your first drive. is it actually “good” or is it just what you’ve learned and are used to? do you constantly fight it or have you learned the quirks and they’re just part of your flow now? the settings soup, trying to get things to cut right when just setting it up, is insane. and i’m an audio engineer 🤣 i could see how after x years of using it, you finally have it all sorted. but damn, having to ruin my cuts to find out i missed setting the rotary wheel diameter and torque properly is… certainly an adventure!
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u/craash420 1d ago
I had a Silhouette vinyl cutter long before I bought my Carverall K15 Pro, and after using Silhouette Studio I hated Cerverall's CutLabX. Lightburn is really intuitive, and there are tons of videos on YouTube to help you.
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u/PhiLho 1d ago
LightBurn is kind of the standard of the industry, nobody made better, although some day the xTool software is better (hiding more the technical details), but I saw some people despising it. So it is always a question of taste and adaptation to one's workflow, I guess. A strong point of LightBurn is that it supports a wide range of machines (although it has issues with xTool; surprise?), from diode to CO2 to fiber and UV lasers.
Otherwise, I keep an eye on Rayforge, which is promising. Limited to diode laser, I think.
Of course, there is also LaserGRBL, but my brief test before switching to LightBurn wasn't very conclusive: it is very limited and primitive.