RDCam/laserworks trouble

[Arjen Abbestee]

I'm having problems with the software that came with my Shenhui laser. With some designs it hangs while sending data to the machine. The progress bar "processing data" hangs and stays there forever. As if that is not annoying enough, the machine starts cutting the parts already sent, then stops. The only way to get out os this is hitting escape, then reset the machine. But trying again results in the same error, and usually a crash of rdcam, requiring a restart of the computer before rdcam will start up again without communication errors.
When I retry without rebooting the machine, sometimes it starts cutting a line in the wrong places or even lines that are not in the design at all...
There is no predicting on which designs the problem will occur. I've had it happen on a single circle (drawn in laserworks itself) and on fairly complex designs imported from Illustrator. I can always isolate some shapes im the design that cause the problem. Yesterday I had a design that had a repeating shape in a circle. 18 of the shapes cut fine, two simply refuse to cut no matter what I do. I even downgraded the computer I use for cutting from Win7 to XP. Same difference. In the end I managed to cut out the shapes using 'dot' in stead of cut with a high frequency.

Anybody else experience these kind of problems? I sent one of the offending designs to Joy Yang (Shenhui tech support) and even though he is always very helpful (even when it's 11 PM in China!) I have not heard back from him yet.

Thanks,

Arjen

[George M. Perzel]

Arjen;
I have never seen anything like that on my Shenhui. I would guess it is either bad software, a design with hidden layers, or the control board
I would first try a different version of Laserwork-which one are you using? Do you design in Illustrator? Make sure you export as Illustrator 8 as Laserworks seems to have issues with some other versions. I design in Corel draw, save the raster engraving as a bitmap, and the vector engraving as an AI file and then import them into Laserworks. Only issue I have had is double engraving due to a hidden layer on some AI imports.
Best Regards,
GeorgeLa
serarts

[Arjen Abbestee]

Hi George,

This is embarrassing, asking a question and then forgetting about it...
I'm not sure what software version I use, I'm not in my workshop now. The software came with the machine, it was shipped from China in september 2013 so I assume it is the latest version. I've asked the tech guy at Shenhui about where to find a newer/different version of the software, but even though they are very helpful with every other question they have carefully avoided answering any question about software updates.
Since asking this I switched from a fairly new computer running Windows7 to an old laptop on Windows XP. I have had this problem once or twice since, but not nearly as often as on the newer W7 machine.
Since it does not happen very often anymore I cannot say for sure, but I think it only happens when 'sew compensation' is enabled.
I draw everything in Illustrator and save as AI8. So that cannot be the problem. Also, like I said, it happened to me on a single circle drawn in RDCam itself.

Thanks,

A