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Thread: Chinese laser purchase/Shenui/Laserworks tips and tricks thread

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Chinese laser purchase/Shenui/Laserworks tips and tricks thread

    Considering a lot of us are going or have gone that direction , I thought it a good idea to combine our knowledge pool in one thread. So I have started one. Those of you that have already posted to other threads can perhaps repeat and consolidate the posts here or at least point to other posts on the forum as links
    Here's Mine
    http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...hes-from-China
    http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...s-they-re-here-!!!

    I have a situation where I cannot really mess with the finer points of my lasers and the software as we really are using em as workhorses and they are loaded up with jobs all day long so guys like John , Rich , George etc who are really putting em thru their paces will have invaluable info.
    A good idea is to perhaps work together to explain and explain the effects of all the settings and the chinglish words.
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  2. #2
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    Good idea for a thread.

    My first tip will be to not trust the water sensor. I have had more than a couple occasions where I started a job then realized that I had not turned on the chiller. Each time I caught the mistake within a few seconds but once it was lasering away for a couple minutes without the pump operating. I paused the job for several minutes before turning the pump on and resuming to avoid any thermal shock. I doubt it would have been an issue because the tube had water in it but I decided to err on the side of caution.

    Generally the water pressure sensor does do it's job but not always. I think the best fix it to make use of the output on the chiller itself instead of the pressure sensor in the machine. It's on my list of things to change.
    Shenhui 1440x850, 130 Watt Reci Z6
    Gerber Sabre 408

  3. #3
    Great idea Rodney. Will collect links and post.

    Rich, it may be possible depending on voltages to have both in series?
    Shenhui 1280 100W RECI

  4. #4
    Shenhui 1280 100W RECI

  5. #5
    Vector speed for small details won't go substantially faster than 50mm/s even if you request much more.

    Optimum raster speed for quality seems to be 400mm/s or below.

    Going to 800 or even 1200mm/s might need you to change vendor settings, but beware that these higher speeds will not save time unless the job is very wide and to avoid x-slop error you must have space for acceleration and deceleration at the ends of each scan line.

    Optimized scan adjusts the "interval" which I usually leave at 0.1mm to get it to match the source bitmap to avoid banding. I use 1000 DPI bitmaps, so the machine makes the just under 2% adjustment required to sample the bitmap properly.

    Water temperature on the CW5000 is by default set to ambient -2C with a lower limit of 20C. I found that reducing this lower limit to 15C (read the CW5000 manual) gives a good balance of noise from the chiller and consistent performance. 10C is even better and is the sort of water temperature at which have in the morning in a workshop that has not been heated overnight, so if I set the lower limit to 10C it will keep it here and the first cut of the day is similar to the last. However, the fridge is on much more and is by far the noisiest thing in our workshop given that the compressor and exhaust are remote. Watch out for condensation. This is the basis of the 2 below ambient stock setting.

    Lens installed upside down and should be convex up as shown in the manual. This has a slightly shorter focal length and is about 1.5mm closer than the supplied 9mm stick.

    Air assist
    : 5 PSI from a 500W Koi compressor which is oil free, 100% duty and quiet seems to be enough with the stock head design even for cutting wood. The cone is closer to the work and has a smaller nozzle than some other Chinese machines and some owners of those are modifying their cones to be similar.

    GaAs lens: If you ordered extra lenses they may substitute your choice (in our case 100mm) for a 38mm version of one of these. They look silver/grey and are opaque to visible light and the red dot. Some other Chinese machine users rave about the power density on these lenses. I have only tried ours briefly and not found an obvious difference, but they are supposedly more robust than the yellow ZnSe lenses.

    Red dot through the mirrors:
    I asked for it at the head, but got it through the mirrors. I tried removing the beam combiner next to the laser tube to see if I got any more cutting power at the same speed/power and found no difference. Rodney found a 15% difference and he also reported that his red dot diode got nuked. So for me it stays for now. YMMV.
    Shenhui 1280 100W RECI

  6. #6
    Anyone know how to get the "colorbar" to appear by default but not above the work bar so that you are missing the lower parts of the work bar? I know you can double click it but it doesn't remember the settings.
    Shenhui 1280 100W RECI

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by john banks View Post
    GaAs lens: If you ordered extra lenses they may substitute your choice (in our case 100mm) for a 38mm version of one of these. They look silver/grey and are opaque to visible light and the red dot. Some other Chinese machine users rave about the power density on these lenses. I have only tried ours briefly and not found an obvious difference, but they are supposedly more robust than the yellow ZnSe lenses.
    I think it's a placebo effect for those users. GaAs lenses will be more robust to abuse, but from a power density standpoint they will have zero measurable difference in effect compared to ZnSe...
    Hi-Tec Designs, LLC -- Owner (and self-proclaimed LED guru )

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  8. #8
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    Hi all
    I dont know if it is the right place here but I have made a pictural about setting up and squaring the 40W co2 chinese machines for a few friends and I was thinking maybe others could be interested too.
    the reason was that as my machine arrived it was god did a decent job but as I did go deeper in exploring all the different settings especially for picture engraving I discovered that there must be something not exact from the machine hardware sett up.
    thats where I started and my feeling was right it started with the tube who was not exactly set, then adjusting all the mirrors, squaring all the rails and the gantry.
    but I had a hard time explaine all this to my buddys I made a series of picture for all what I have done like they say " a picture is more then a tousand words" and everybody got it right a way.

    now the question is to post this picture series here ( thes are 26picture) or not , what do you say?

    greetings
    walt

  9. #9
    Walter

    That's the purpose of this forum. It might be easier on everybody if there were notations on the pictures or some reference as to what is going on.
    Mike Null

    St. Louis Laser, Inc.

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  10. #10
    Join Date
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    Victor, NY
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    Hi Gang;
    I cut a lot of wood and the Shenhui supplied coaxial air feed did not do a great job of reducing flaring at the workpiece. I first tried plugging the hole in the head and directing the airflow directly at the workpiece using a mounting similar to the one which is supplied for the red dot. That resulted in a quick buildup of residue on the lens-unsatisfactory.
    I the came up with the following scheme which provides the best of both worlds-see pic below.
    An L-shaped quick connect adapter is drillede on the bottom to snugly fit a 1/8" copper tubing. The tubing is bent as shown, angle cut on the bottom, and epoxied into the hole on the connector. Air now flows both to the bottom of the lens and to the work piece.
    Best Regards,
    George
    Laserarts
    Attached Images Attached Images
    *twin 80 watt Shenhui 1280
    *60 watt Laserpro Mercury -42ips
    *(2) 30 watt Laserpro Venus-42 ips
    *whole bunch of woodworking/metalworking machines
    *128 screwdrivers (all needed)
    *wonderful wife (1st) of 53 years who allows me to collect screwdrivers

  11. #11
    I have tried the CorelDraw plug in with X5 and Win7 64. It gives a path/file error unless you run X5 as administrator or alternatively change the permissions on the Program Files (x86)\Corel\CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 folder to full control. I suspect Vista will be the same.

    I quite like the plug in as it allows you to take a Corel Draw file and then click the icon in the toolbar and then click start which is a bit less faff than exporting as an AI file and loading into Laserwork. All the options are there and the text files can still be edited to improve the Chinglish. It appears to sort out all the layers, vector and bitmap stuff and improves workflow. Unfortunately for a high resolution screen the window is a little small though and I haven't found a way to resize it yet.
    Shenhui 1280 100W RECI

  12. #12
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    When you install the Corel Plugin there will be a check box named "Plug Laserwork". Checking this box will start up the full LaserWorks when you run a job from Corel, instead of bringing up the small window.
    Shenhui 1440x850, 130 Watt Reci Z6
    Gerber Sabre 408

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by john banks View Post
    Anyone know how to get the "colorbar" to appear by default but not above the work bar so that you are missing the lower parts of the work bar? I know you can double click it but it doesn't remember the settings.
    On one of my computers the color bar appears vertically next to the "work" panel which is nice and makes sense. On the other it appears above the work panel forcing the work panel to the bottom which cuts off the bottom buttons.

    The first is XP on an old Gateway laptop. The latter is on XP running under VMWare fusion on a MacBook Pro. My guess is that it has to do with the screen resolution.
    Shenhui 1440x850, 130 Watt Reci Z6
    Gerber Sabre 408

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    naples florida
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    adjusting K40 machines part1

    Hi all,
    I was warned in all the foren about tolerance and quality of the chinese cheap laser, thats why I started after receiving my K40 machine right a way to check out all the very important parts for accuracy. later a few buddys of mine who had there machines
    allready but had the same accuracy problemes like everybody else needed help and I try to explaine but that did not work out thats why I made a series of pictures with the steps what should be done .
    and here they are.
    the first section is the main part the lasertube and mirror #1 ( the one closest to the tube
    the second section is all the mechanical parts and the laser beam it self on the picture is the explanation what sould be done.
    greetings
    walttubeadjstep2.jpgtubeadjstep1.jpgtubeadjstep3.jpgtube miror1.jpgstep1.jpgstep2.jpgstep3.jpgstep4.jpg

  15. #15
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    Sep 2011
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    naples florida
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    Hi all
    something did go wrong with part 1 of my pictural because it does not show thats why I start here again
    step5.jpgstep6.jpgstep7.jpgstep7a.jpgstep8.jpgstep9.jpgstep10.jpgstep21.jpg

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