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David J Goldsmith
03-14-2018, 10:16 AM
My parents have a VLS2.30, nice simple 30 watt desktop laser. When they first got it it seemed to be working fine, but then it was moved twice and sat unused for about 8 months. They tried getting it up and running again last week and it wasn't working too well so I went home this past weekend to help. I will likely be visiting again this weekend so if I can get some advice on anything that can be tried before then I'd appreciate it.

Long story short: When putting a simple raster through (ie, plain black text) it only does the outline of the text. This makes no sense to me. It is a raster, there is no vector, how is it not filling in? I watched it, it goes back and forth as it's supposed to, I can see the beam on the material as it goes all the way across but when I take it out to look it isn't filled in.

By tweaking the power and speed I was able to get better results but still not perfect: thinner parts (like the vertical line of a 'T') come out fine but the wide parts (like the horizontal line of the same 'T') don't get filled in, even though I can see that the laser is firing the entire duration. If this explanation doesn't make sense I'll try to demonstrate it by etching a plain black triangle this weekend.

To begin with the alignment was off: I found some instructions that told me to use some tape to get it dead centre and I did that, but after fixing the alignment there was another thing I noticed which may or may not be expected/related: with the carriage in the lower right corner (furthest distance from the laser), the "test laser" step puts a nice black dot right in the middle of the tape. In the upper left corner (shortest distance from the laser) it burns a hole clean through. I need to cut the power (from 20% to 15%) to get the same just black dot result. Is that supposed to be the case, that this apparent difference in power depending on where the carriage is is normal and not something to worry about? Could it be directly related to my actual problem or possibly a different problem? With all the optics back in place, the focus is also wrong: the red laser is a perfect dot in one corner but becomes a blur in the opposite corner. I suspect that this may be a different problem, but it could be related.

After the alignment was fixed, I did some tests on paper, wood, and ceramic, with one line of text one inch tall. For the paper, I was not able to get a perfect result: if I increase the power or decrease the speed anymore then it was correctly filling in the wide parts but it burns clean through the narrow parts. I was able to get more-or-less good result on the wood (more on that in a minute) but the ceramic I had at 100% power and 1% speed and it still had some gaps. This same ceramic worked just fine 8 months ago.
The wood test revealed another, possibly related problem. I tweaked the settings until I was able to get good output, testing with the 1 inch tall text. I then tested with more text, filling a 4 inch space, but as it moved down the block it got lighter and lighter, going back to being hollow text halfway down.

I've been googling for days but I'm obviously not using the right words; finally reached the end of my efforts and felt I needed the input of experts. If anyone has any experience or suggestions of any kind I'd appreciate it. Does this look like an issue with the optics? A lens that isn't right? Maybe the laser itself has just worn out despite sitting unused for so long and needs to be "recharged" or whatever you do with them?

Bill George
03-14-2018, 10:28 AM
Do you have the correct color pallet? When I had my ULS I thought it was not working correctly.... until I installed the approved color pallet in Corel Draw.

Ian Stewart-Koster
03-14-2018, 10:36 AM
Was the text outlined with a hairline, or a fatter outline?
IN the Printer driver properties, was black 'raster' or engrave checked, as opposed to being unchecked, or set as 'skip' ?I never go straight to print, but always go via the Properties options. you can turn on or off the colours there.

Mike Null
03-14-2018, 10:57 AM
It would be helpful if you could post a picture of the work. The problem could be a multitude of things including the artwork.

David J Goldsmith
03-14-2018, 11:02 AM
I used inkscape to create the text which can only "print" in black when done directly. To get vector cuts out of inkscape it needs to be exported to a PDF and printed from Adobe which I'm not doing. It is definitely making raster motions and never vector motions, always left-right-left, never outlining. The "outline" is fat and gets fatter as I increase power or decrease speed in the raster settings and thinner when doing the opposite. I am 100% certain that it is doing the correct thing from a software perspective.

David J Goldsmith
03-14-2018, 11:08 AM
I took this image of the last thing I did to demonstrate the issue:
http://rebirthofxeen.com/images/IMG_20180311_201605.jpg
You can see anywhere it's "wide" it is faded and unfilled: the middle of the B, tops and bottoms of Os, the cross of the 't', etc...

Bill George
03-14-2018, 12:30 PM
Get rid of Inkscape and use Corel Draw a lot less issues and it works. How are you getting the color pallet correctly for the print driver in ULS? As I also recall from using Inkscape you only get outlines of letters (vectors?) , to get a true filled BMP there is a special output.

Kev Williams
03-14-2018, 1:02 PM
If the machine is set for vector, it won't raster; if it's set for raster, it won't vector. David's machine is rastering, so there's no raster/vector settings problem. :)

This sounds like it may be the tickle setting is way outta whack..

David J Goldsmith
03-14-2018, 1:31 PM
As I also recall from using Inkscape you only get outlines of letters (vectors?) , to get a true filled BMP there is a special output. You have that backwards. Inkscape can only raster directly, in order to get cuts and etches you need to export to a PDF and then load it in Adobe PDF viewer. I use Inkscape because I know it, I've been using it for over a decade; an extra step to be able to laser something, but I actually kind of like the fact that it needs an intermediate PDF, makes it easier to send and display.

David J Goldsmith
03-14-2018, 1:39 PM
Ok, what the dickens is a tickle setting? I'm googling and there's a bunch of forum posts saying "oh yeah, that's the tickle setting" but I can't figure out what it's supposed to do; I'm not even sure the VLS2.30 has it, at least I can't find mention of it in any manual. Other ULS engravers talk about it though. I can totally believe some internal settings getting bumped and changed from the way it was moved, though.
How confident are you on this tickle setting thing? Because I've almost convinced myself that it's the tube and working up a way to tell my parents it's likely going to cost a few thousand to fix, but if I can just show up and flip some DIPs until it works that'd be so much easier.

Mike Null
03-14-2018, 2:59 PM
Before you start changing tickle settings you should call ULS tech support. I am not convinced it is either a tickle setting or the tube. ULS used to loan out a power meter so you could check the tube.

Ian Stewart-Koster
03-15-2018, 10:09 AM
Bill said it above - get rid of Inkscape, and use Corel Draw.
Universal lasers were made with Corel in mind. It's SO simple to use them that way. That's their beauty.
And you can set to raster/engrave as well as vector engrave or vector cut, all in the one file at the one time, if wanted.

David J Goldsmith
03-15-2018, 1:05 PM
Ok, I'll try a copy of Corel Draw this weekend, but if that actually fixes it I'll be very surprised.
Thanks!

Bill George
03-15-2018, 1:24 PM
Ok, I'll try a copy of Corel Draw this weekend, but if that actually fixes it I'll be very surprised.
Thanks!

FYI ULS requires a certain color pallet, so some research you will find out. Also line widths wider than a hairline will not vector, same thing do the research.

David J Goldsmith
03-17-2018, 5:38 PM
Alrighty, got a copy of Corel, made a square, rotated it 45 degrees, filled it in black, set the outline to none: no difference, still not filling in properly.
http://rebirthofxeen.com/images/IMG_20180317_170924.jpg
I started it out with the default 33% power: couldn't see anything. Increased it to 70% about 1/3 of the way down for it to start showing what you see here. While at this power you can very lightly see the infill, much of the edge is burned completely through. Ignore the holes in the middle, that was from an earlier test on the back of the paper. Looking at it now I can see that the 33% power did do something, it is very very lightly a different colour; kinda seems like it cleaned the paper instead of marking it :P

Bill George
03-17-2018, 8:14 PM
FYI ULS requires a certain color pallet, so some research you will find out. Also line widths wider than a hairline will not vector, same thing do the research. There are also some power supply voltage checks to make before replacing the tube



http://www.lstgroup.com.au/docs/ULS_Troubleshooting_Guide.pdf

http://www.saic.edu/media/saic/pdfs/academics/academicresources/instructionalshops/aoc_laserguide.pdf


http://www.engravingsys.com/equipment-support/universal-laser-systems-support/

Scott Marquez
03-17-2018, 8:54 PM
It looks like you need to determine if you have a power output problem or a software issue.
Can you set up a vector cut job to verify that you have good power?
Scott

David J Goldsmith
03-17-2018, 9:42 PM
Also line widths wider than a hairline will not vector, same thing do the research.
Again, there are no vectors in this image at all. It is a straight black square. In the preview it looks like a solid black square. I tested by changing the opacity and in the preview it did change the dithering as expected. I am 100% convinced that the process is correct. Even if the pallet were somehow wrong and it's adjusting the power accordingly it should still be consistent, not a huge blast that burns through the paper followed by barely anything.

David J Goldsmith
03-17-2018, 9:42 PM
Can you set up a vector cut job to verify that you have good power?
I'm back home now but I might visit again next weekend. I can do some further cut tests then, but the first thing I did when I showed up last week was to try and cut a sticker from a PDF I had created a couple years ago. It had always worked fine before but now it was cutting inconsistently, failing to etch into most of the sticker. I figured whatever was wrong with the raster was probably the same here and solving the one would fix the other.

Bill George
03-18-2018, 8:50 AM
I'm back home now but I might visit again next weekend. I can do some further cut tests then, but the first thing I did when I showed up last week was to try and cut a sticker from a PDF I had created a couple years ago. It had always worked fine before but now it was cutting inconsistently, failing to etch into most of the sticker. I figured whatever was wrong with the raster was probably the same here and solving the one would fix the other.

I have nothing more to add, good luck.

David J Goldsmith
04-19-2018, 1:39 PM
So it was the laser. Ordered a new one, picked it up a couple weeks ago, visited my parents yesterday, installed it, and everything is running nice again.

David J Goldsmith
04-19-2018, 1:41 PM
So it was the laser. Got a new one a few weeks ago, visited my parents yesterday to replace it, everything is running fine again.

Bert Kemp
04-19-2018, 11:28 PM
So you bought a new Laser what did you get how big is it what wattage??

matt heinzel
04-24-2018, 8:26 AM
I assume he got a new tube not a whole new system. Sometimes the symptoms can lead in so many directions, sad that is was a tube, but they do offer good rates over at ULS to exchange them.

David J Goldsmith
04-24-2018, 9:50 AM
Yeah, it was $1600 for a replacement 30 watt tube. More than we were expecting but not as much as it could've been: first quote I got was almost twice that but included "installation". I'm not paying $1600 to remove a half-dozen of screws.