Chinese laser controller woes. Any ideas?

[Michael Arruda]

Hello all,

I have a Redsail M500 laser engraver with a 60w tube running a 6515 controller. I was running this a year ago with an old XP laptop. Since then I have closed down my shop, moved back to the house and am just now trying to get her back up and running. The only system I have to use now is a Win x64 laptop.

I have installed the software I received from Redsail and Laser cut 5.3 recognizes the dongle, all is well. But, when I plug in the laser is recognizes it as an 'EZUSB FX2' device and doesn't have the drivers. I downloaded the drivers for an FX2 USB interface directly from the manufacturer, Cypress. I can now install it, but Laser cut won't recognize the laser to communicate with to send cut files. I tried exporting to a USB stick and plugged it in direct but no dice there either. I have opened up the side and used a different USB extension to connect to the controller as well, with no luck. It says 'detecting USB flash drive' then stops, goes back to the main screen. It just continues doing this in an endless loop without giving me access to the cut file I put on the drive.

Any ideas, short of a new controller for $500?

Thanks,
Michael

[Mark Taylor2]

What version of Windows on the laptop? 7? 8? 10?

[Michael Arruda]

Win7 pro x64

[Michael Arruda]

I found another driver on rabbit laser's site for the controller. Finally got it talking to the laptop and it's working. Still not loading from USB drive, but at least I can use it now.

Now I need to figure out my X axis- i'm getting wavy lines. I think it's just the rollers, but we'll see.

Thanks,
Michael

[John Noell]

Probably irrelevant to your situation, but...did you see any warnings about unsigned drivers? My RDCam/LaserWorks drivers won't load under the 64 bit OS. I've heard others say most Chinese drivers only work properly with a 32 bit OS.

[Michael Arruda]

There was a warning but I installed anyway. Works perfectly fine so far. Even less glitchy- when I was running it under xp x32, the xy jog control on the PC wouldn't communicate with the laser. Now in win x64 it works fine.

Seems most things on these lasers from China are hit or miss- sometimes work for some people, may not work for someone else, even given the same system and parameters.

-Michael