Turbo Accelerator for Epilog optics

[Joe Kace]

I was surfing around and located this company that makes this optics turbo accelerator to increase cutting speed. Has anyone had any experience with this little gadget or know of someone who has tried it. Here's the link.

http://www.factengineering.com/turbo.php

Joe

[Richard Rumancik]

If what they say is accurate I would think Epilog would take a significant interest in this. Joe, why not contact Epilog and ask their opinion?

[Joe Kace]

From what I understand Epilog is not interested in this idea. I already talked to my rep. He had zero opinion on it and didn't know all to much about it. I am so tempted to buy it because I would sure like to have that extra power with all the vector cutting that I do.

[Bruce Volden]

I bought an LMI laser engraver back in 1995. WAAAAYYY back then they had included in their drivers a feature called "blank skip". Imagine the letter "H". It would accelerate to 100% between the areas not being engraved. Of course this was a rastered area but this was 15+ years ago! Now you folks doing this for a living know what time means, and milliseconds add up when you have a production job going on. Of course companies aren't interested in it if they didn't think of it in a production environment. I have talked with Epilog, Kern, ULS---they all like the idea but NEVER developed it in their drivers---why, I don't know--patents???

Bruce

[Rodne Gold]

You wont get a , for EG, 50w laser from a 30w with merely improving air assist , at the advertised cost of the full system which seems to be $1200 it seems rather expensive. You could probably do the same with a simple directed nozzle and not have to worry bout the air assist itself contaminating lens optics.

[Joe Kace]

I'm not sure if you need everything on that list. I sent them an email with a bunch of questions, one of which was do I have to buy everything to get the max performance from this accelerator. I will post my response when I get one.

[Michael Hunter]

If you spend all day ***cutting*** acrylic or other thermoplastics, then I can see that it might pay for itself quite quickly by the time saved with even a small increase in machine speed.

I don't think that it would help at all with engraving anything or cutting wood/card etc., so not very good value for those of us who find that every job is different.

[Rodne Gold]

I fail to see why it would be any better than the manufacturers properly set up air assist?
Be aware that with acrylic and some other materials , excess air pressure is actually not at all desireable . With acrylic it will actually lead to a less than polished or frosty edge as the high air pressure cools the cut too quickly and wont allow enough melt. I have also experienced problems when the lens chamber is pressurised , if you don't use serious moisture and oil traps , you can contaminate the lens and destroy it if your trap fails or is inadequate and you get oil or water on the lens.

[Joe Kace]

Rodney, you are very correct, and that is the one thing I was most worried about. The moisture and oil traps would have to be checked very often, for me probably weekly because I do so much cutting. I haven't made a decision one way or the other on this product, but I would sure like more power with a low cost solution.. As for acrylic, couldn't you just adjust the pressure reg?

[Scott Shepherd]

That is why you need dry air on a Universal. Universals air assist system is essentially the same thing. Plus, it has air curtains over all the mirrors. On our systems, the air has to be dry or you can break or damage the optics.

I've been using a through the nose cone system for 3 years now. I suppose I could measure it with and without and see the difference. I suppose, in theory, it does make a time difference. The time difference I notice is when cutting engraving plastics, I can run faster without discoloring the edge from too much heat. So yes, I guess it does make a difference.

[Martin Boekers]

I bought an LMI laser engraver back in 1995. WAAAAYYY back then they had included in their drivers a feature called "blank skip". Imagine the letter "H". It would accelerate to 100% between the areas not being engraved. Of course this was a rastered area but this was 15+ years ago! Now you folks doing this for a living know what time means, and milliseconds add up when you have a production job going on. Of course companies aren't interested in it if they didn't think of it in a production environment. I have talked with Epilog, Kern, ULS---they all like the idea but NEVER developed it in their drivers---why, I don't know--patents???

Bruce

This just seems a lot of ramping up and braking. In some posts here it seems some have had a "degradation" on the edges as the laser gets up to speed on one side then slows on the opposite side.
At the speed these thing go I can imagine that would wear and tear on the motor and belts also.

Epilog though on the rotary I believe actually set the drive up so that the rotary turns at a consistant rate and no longer skips the space between the lines. This was causing an issue sometimes with
the object "slipping" in place was the device quickly moved forward between spaces. Actually this adds time but is much more acurate.


Marty

[Neil Pabia]

I have one possibly coming in for testing and evaluation purposes, I will let you know how it does when/if it arrives.

[Rodne Gold]

GCC also had a skip wht , in fact do have a skip wht function which is not enabled due to poor quality engraving when using it.
I fail to see how adjustable air thru the lens box and cutting nozzle will be any better than the same thing via an adjustable nozzle , I have used both systems on my GCC machines and the cutting speeds have only varied in respect to how much power I have. Is the air assist on the Epilog mini (the site refers specifically to the mini) so rudimentary that one has to spend a lot more money to get it right?

[Dan Hintz]

Just found this thread this evening, so I did a little surfing...

This quote from their site is telling:

A product of FACT Engineering’s in-depth experience with industrial steel cutting lasers...
Steel cutting lasers are in the kW range, where removal of dross via air stream is a necessity... this does not really apply to us peons with systems often measured with only two figures in the Wattage department. Plastics are the only area in which melting the substrate is a possibility for us (as compared to complete vaporization, such as in wood), and even then it's not a significant enough portion of the lasing action to warrant a high-powered airstream. I just don't see the benefit, but I can see a lot of problems caused by a high-volume stream (such as what Steve and Rodney mentioned with acrylic).

[paul mott]

I have always used coaxial air assist and I suspect that the claims that this method will increase feedrate is rather exaggerated.
On the plus side this system does make a better job of protecting the lens from work related contamination, smoke etc.
On the down side Coaxial air has the major drawback of requiring CDA and as already been mentioned you would be putting a lot of faith in your filters, traps etc if you were to use shop air. (I use an oil-less ROC-R as my air supply just to be sure).

Paul.

[Bill Cunningham]

Just wondering what happens when over time your laser may go out of alignment a bit.. This would have to fire 'exactly' in the middle of the lens.. I know this is optimum, but not always a reality in every section of the table. A beam slightly out of alignment, could cause extreme heating, and possible lens cracking.

[paul mott]

In the video it looked like no alignment was necessary - not sure about that.
For me, alignment is critical because the exit hole is just 1.5mm diameter but I have 3 x 120deg spaced adjusting screws for the lens assembly to allow for this. I don't think there is any worries about overheating the lens as the airflow more than dissipates any possible heat build up.

Paul.

[Dan Hintz]

I don't think there is any worries about overheating the lens as the airflow more than dissipates any possible heat build up.
No, but once the cone is on, you always have to run air through it, or else you'll be purchasing a lens later that day.

[paul mott]

No, but once the cone is on, you always have to run air through it, or else you'll be purchasing a lens later that day.

Come on Dan, what's happened to your sense of adventure. :D

Paul.

[Dan Hintz]

Just something to keep in mind... my system is coaxial, so I have to be very diligent about enabling air if the cone is on, else I'll crack it pretty quickly.

[Craig E Young]

I know this post is 6 years old, but wondering if anyone actually had any experience with this accelerator?

[Bill George]

I know this post is 6 years old, but wondering if anyone actually had any experience with this accelerator?
Did you read the Thread I think its been answered already.

[Kev Williams]

I bought an LMI laser engraver back in 1995. WAAAAYYY back then they had included in their drivers a feature called "blank skip". Imagine the letter "H". It would accelerate to 100% between the areas not being engraved. Of course this was a rastered area but this was 15+ years ago! Now you folks doing this for a living know what time means, and milliseconds add up when you have a production job going on. Of course companies aren't interested in it if they didn't think of it in a production environment. I have talked with Epilog, Kern, ULS---they all like the idea but NEVER developed it in their drivers---why, I don't know--patents???

Bruce

This just seems a lot of ramping up and braking. In some posts here it seems some have had a "degradation" on the edges as the laser gets up to speed on one side then slows on the opposite side.
At the speed these thing go I can imagine that would wear and tear on the motor and belts also.

Epilog though on the rotary I believe actually set the drive up so that the rotary turns at a consistant rate and no longer skips the space between the lines. This was causing an issue sometimes with
the object "slipping" in place was the device quickly moved forward between spaces. Actually this adds time but is much more acurate.


Marty

Old thread this may be, I feel the need to clear up the misconception here bout 'blank skip', aka 'skip white' and a whatever other names there are for it...

The process of blank skipping does not involve speeding the machine up between the blank spaces within individual text characters or graphic elements. These machines can't do that. What it IS, is the act of not "engraving" the white spaces across the entire width of the invisible bounding box surrounding all objects of the same color that overlap each other in the horizontal plane... And since that's a terrible explanation, pics are in order :)

Note how the bottom of the T and the top of the W overlap within the horizontal plane,
and how the bottom of the W and the top of the S do not- This is what defines a bounding box.
So because there's some horizontal blank space, we have 2 bounding boxes...
A machine that doesn't skip blank areas (like my LS900, which drives me nuts sometimes)
will raster the entire width of the bounding box, including all the blank (gray) area...
363475

Now, suppose the W and S DO overlap, now we have one bigger bounding box,
with a ton more blank space to the left of "Space" to engrave...
363478

This shows the engraving area of a machine that DOES skip the blank areas,
it sweeps ONLY the gray areas of the INNER bounding boxes rather than
the outer bounding box.
363477

Most Chinese machines do this, my Triumph does! (they HAVE to or overall engraving speeds would be so slow they'd be useless!)
My GCC Explorer does too, although I can have it not white skip if I want. But my bestest machine is old enough that it doesn't... Good thing it's fast! ;)

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