I'm starting this thread in hopes Ross sees it
One of my customers recently bought a 50w fiber to engrave their parts. This was at my suggestion, as the wife & I have started our 'semi' retirement, which means keeping some of our best buck-for-the-bang customers. Since they received the machine they've been fraught with problems. For weeks I've been trying to help them get this machine up and running, which is usually a simple matter plug n play. And they now live 160 miles from me so it's all been via email till now. It took them several weeks just to get past the 'cannot finded dog!' screen. They got help with that from Cloudray, which may have sold them the laser, not really sure. Problem #1 turned out to be they got a 'basic' fiber laser, but the software stick came with the new EzCad Lite 2:14:16 version. Best I can make out, this version requires a special controller card designed for the 'lite' version, their machine has the basic 'old' card. Cloudray was able to get the lite driver to load and run the program, but it was hit and miss at best. Cloudray then got them a regular version that actually worked, but they were having engraving issues.
Last night they came by for a lesson in Fiber Laser and EzCad basics, they were here for 6 hours. They brought their laptop, which I connected up to MY 50w laser, and away we went..
Where on their shiny new Asus win11 laptop the EzCad that worked WAS I could never tell, but they did get it to load, once. I found out immediately that, IMO, Win11 is just 1 more step in a worse direction. It took all of that 6 hours just for me to figure out how to find basic files on the computer. But I digress-- Anyway, every other time we tried to load EzCad the stupid Lite version would load, and none of us could find the version we'd just load prior. I have a stick with 2.14.10 versions saved for my 2nd Ebay fiber, for each of the 6 different lenses for it. The lens that came with their machine is a 200/290, so I plugged in my stick, and ran that program. Voila, it loaded, driver was fine, and a quick test proved their computer would at least fire MY laser.
After that I spent time loading up a copy of Corel X3 on their computer in case I need to file-share with them later. After that task was done, it was time to show them how to 'tune up' EzCad, and engrave one of their parts.
MY machine came with a stick loaded with 2.14.9, instead of 10, and until last night I'd never even used it. So I plugged it in and we ran EzCad from it.
I then went thru the basics of the F3 and paratmeters menus, hatch filling, colors, etc etc... Had some scrap black alum at the ready, input one of their drawings to test engraved, and specifically grouped JUST the "800" part of the phone number, and showed them how to hatch fill it. This 800 was maybe 3-1/2mm tall at best. Engraving settings were 1500 speed, 30% power and 30 freq, and I set the TS settings how I like them. Test plate was focused and ready, so we hit the F2 button...
What happened amazed me. And Ross's post immediately came into my head: "... It's Slower Than People Suggest"... uh, YEAH--??? The little 800, that should've been just zip-zip and done before you could say 'one one thousand', literally took like 4 seconds! The laser beam as it hit the aluminum was actually 'crackling' as it slowly plodded thru hatch fill. AND the beam was anything but bright! So I cranked up the power and speed, and that run was only slightly faster, and if it was brighter I couldn't tell. The engraving was only "ok" too...
Hmmm....
Shut down EzCad, then using my other stick I loaded up my 200/290 version, opened the job, adjusted the settings to 1500/30/30, same hatch, and this time engraved the whole 7 digit phone number. This time, less than 2 seconds, blinding bright, and the familiar zzzzzt zzzzzt sound when engraving instead of sounding something like a miniature arc welder...
I'm not sure who else has come across these issues, and I hope the settings I provided Ross help perk up his machine! I haven't had time to go thru all the parameters and settings differences between the two programs, but there's obviously something horribly amiss in my 2.14.9-stick's settings!
Reply With Quote
