Alan Young recently posted a problem regarding the loss of power in a LaserPro/Pinnacle Mercury laser when enabling the RAMP function during vector cutting.
I am convinced that there is a problem with the firmware and/or driver and it can be verified doing the following simple test:
I am using firmware 2-24 and driver 3.42. Make a Corel 12 drawing with the images shown below-not necessary to be exact, just 3 separate images.
Set line width to hairline and make color your vector cut color. Set parameters to :
Black & White mode
Advance to Relative
DPI to 300
PPI to Auto
Pen Color to P=30, S=100
RAMP ON
Send file to laser
Put a piece of scrap material (cardboard, matboard, wood, etc.) in the laser and autofocus. Set laser head to start point. Run test.
Output should be a very faint outline of the three images.
With same settings, EXCEPT with RAMP OFF, send image to laser and run test.
Output will be missing first image and last two will be burned at higher apparent power than first run. If you immediately run 2nd test again, all 3 images will be burned!
I then ran the same tests with same settings except P=100, S=100 and got the same results , except first image (square) on 2nd test was very faintly burned while others were solid burns.
Conclusions?:
1. It is obvious that power output is much higher with RAMP OFF rather than ON.
2. I get same results with previous firmware (2-20)-have not tried previous driver.
3. I sense that RAMP is not fully effective unless power level is close to 100%. I cut a lot of wood, 1/4" and thicker, and have had mixed results in the past from using the RAMP function-not much better when cutting acrylic.
4. I cannot explain the residual effect of RAMP on the 2nd test as this is a new file which should be independent of anything which happened previously-really weird.
I would appreciate it if Jerry and Alan wouyld run the same test to verfiy my results-and anyone else with a Mercury.
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