I press the up arrow and my laser head moves to the right. Is the machine broken?

Almost never. The machine sits on your table turned from the way its maker draws it — an Artilume T1 used from the side of its arm is a common case — and GRBL has no setting to swap its axes, so the sending software has to. In Lùmen 3.2, click the ↻ button beside the jog pad until the up arrow moves the head away from you. The bed on the canvas, the arrows and the engraving all follow, and the setting is remembered for that machine.

After turning it, up is right but the right arrow moves the head left. What now?

Then the machine is mirrored, not turned, and no rotation fixes a mirror. Turn on Mirrored in Advanced › Machine; up stays as it is and right is corrected. If one axis runs backwards in every program you use, the controller's direction setting ($3) is the cause, and Lùmen's switch fixes it without touching the firmware.

Will my design still engrave where the canvas shows it after I turn the machine?

Yes. Lùmen rewrites every move on its way to the controller, so jobs, Frame and imported G-code land where the canvas shows them. Raster engraving keeps scanning along the machine's own X axis, so speed and quality don't change. The only thing that still speaks in the machine's terms is the X/Y readout in the status bar.

← FAQ

The jog arrows move my laser the wrong way

Machine & jobs · Updated: October 12, 2026

You press ↑ on the jog pad and the head goes to the right — or to the left, or toward you. Nothing is broken. The machine sits on your table turned from the way its maker draws it, and the controller has no way to know. Since Lùmen 3.2 you turn it to match with one button, and the canvas, the arrows and the engraving all follow.

Why it happens

A GRBL controller has a fixed X and a fixed Y: X along one rail, Y along the other, and a home corner where both start. The maker draws the machine from one side and calls that the front. You may well use it from another one.

The Artilume T1 is the classic case. Its manual has a bed 150 mm wide and 200 mm deep, with home at the front-left and the power button and USB port at the front. Plenty of owners stand at the side of the arm instead — the listings call it a 200 × 150 machine, which invites it — and from there the whole machine is a quarter turn round: what the controller calls Y now runs left to right for you, so ↑ moves the head sideways. The same happens with any engraver placed sideways on a bench, or used from the back.

GRBL has no setting to swap its axes. It can reverse an axis, but it cannot make X into Y. So the software that sends the job has to do it.

The fix: turn the machine in Lùmen

Connect and set a small jog step, 1 or 10 mm.
Press ↑. If the head moved away from you, the orientation is already right — skip to step 4.
Otherwise click ↻ beside the jog pad. Each click turns the machine a quarter clockwise: the bed on the canvas turns with it and the arrows follow at once. Press ↑ again — that is the test — and keep clicking until ↑ moves the head away from you.
Now press →. If the head moves to the right, you're done. If it moves to the left, the machine is mirrored rather than turned: see the next section.

The button is beside the jog pad in both sidebars, Simple and Advanced. Lùmen remembers the orientation for each machine: switch to another preset and it keeps its own.

When turning isn't enough: a mirrored machine

If ↑ is right but → goes left, no number of quarter turns will fix it, because the machine is a mirror image of the usual layout — for example one that homes at the back-left with Y running toward you. Switch the sidebar to Advanced, open Machine and turn on Mirrored. ↑ stays as it is and → is corrected. Lùmen points you there itself if you go all the way round with ↻ and it is still wrong.

If one axis runs backwards in every program you use, the controller's direction setting ($3) is what's off. You can correct it in the firmware, but on a machine with limit switches that also sends homing the other way, so ask the maker before changing it. Lùmen's Mirrored switch fixes it inside Lùmen without touching the firmware.

What changes, and what doesn't

The canvas shows the machine as you see it. On a quarter turn the bed's width and height trade places, so a T1 becomes 200 wide and 150 deep. When the corner the machine homes to isn't the canvas origin, a small home mark shows where it is.
The engraving lands where the canvas shows it. Lùmen rewrites every move on its way to the controller — jobs, Frame, resume, and imported G-code too, which is treated as a drawing like any other. A file made for this machine in another program will therefore show turned on the canvas.
Raster engraving still runs along the machine's own X axis, the way the machine is built to engrave, so speed and quality are what they were.
The X/Y readout in the status bar is the controller's own. On a turned machine its X and Y don't follow the canvas yet.
With a rotary attachment active the orientation is set aside: the rotary decides what Y means, and the turn comes back when you return to the flat bed.

Still stuck?

Reach out to support with your engraver model, the $$ output (there's an export button at the top right of the console) and a photo of the machine from where you stand, saying which way ↑ and → move the head. That's enough to tell a turn from a mirror. If the head moves the right way but jobs land in the wrong place, that's a different problem: see My laser moves to the wrong place when I start a job.