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Darrin Davis
09-13-2013, 7:13 PM
We just got a GCC Laserpro Mercury III 25 watt laser engraver. Today, the air assist compressor came in and when I went to read up on it in the owner's manual there was nothing written about the air assist or hook up. I haven't even unpacked the compressor yet but was wondering is the hook up so easy that there is not need for instructions? If so, I'll just hook the thing up. If not, I have a couple of questions.

Does the air just continually blow when I turn the compressor on or does the laser machine control when it blows and doesn't blow?

Do I need to have the air blowing during every cut and every engraving or just during certain processes?

Is there anything else about the air assist that I might not know right now but need to?

Thanks in advance!

Joe Pelonio
09-13-2013, 11:48 PM
I'm not familiar with your laser, and they do vary, but on mine the installation is push in the hose, plug in and go. It is controllable by the controls on my machine but I only turn it on when cutting. Unless it is wired to the laser it will be on all the time, just won't blow when the laser is set to air assist off. On mine, if I let the compressor run all the time, the laser diverts the air to the room when assist is not called for.

Ben Dalton
09-13-2013, 11:50 PM
Darrin,
We've have a GCC explorer and and spirit, and they use pin valves for the air assist. Go to page 11 in the pdf at http://www.himzes.hu/files/mercury.pdf. It shows the diagram of the pin valve, and tells how it works. Just make sure it's open before the pump turns on. My machines control the air assist by plugging the pump into a specified outlet on the machine. There should be another input for electricity on the machine that in turn runs to the outlet the air pump is plugged into. This is all separate from the machines power. That's at least how my machines do it, but I would assume yours is similar. If the mercury's don't have this, you'll just have to plug in the pump each time you want to use the air assist. How you use the air assist will depend on what material you are using and what the job is (vector or raster). Hope this helps.

Mike Lysov
09-14-2013, 5:24 AM
On my Spirit GX it is plugged into an internal power outlet inside the laser so it is only on when you set to use air assist in the printer driver settings starting blowing just before the laser fires and it's off after job is finished. And it uses the same push in connector as Joe mentioned earlier.