Pinnacle M30, sending to laser slow?

[Chad Voller]

My boss purchased a Pinnacle M30, and I'm the one designated to learn the machine. I have no problem doing that since I've been working with computers for over 18 years.

We primarily will use it for cutting out product packaging for preliminary work. Using Laser Master 8, which came with it, it sends vector work to the laser in under 20 seconds. And cuts fine.

Now when I try sending a raster image to the laser from LM8, it just doesn't seem to do anything. I'm typing this currently while waiting for it to finish sending. And of course neither the software nor the Laser say anywhere on it what % is transfered. So how do I know if it is actually sending the file or freaking out? I would think that either the software or hardware manufacturer would find this little tiny bit of information useful to the consumer?!?!?

The file is 1.5MB saved. I would think that even at the slow baud rate that these machines send/receive from the computer, that it would have been received over 10 minutes ago.

I've looked over everything, the page setup of 25 x 18 landscape is correct, nothing is going off the edges of the page layout, there is no error messages showing up on either machine, it just sits there.

Now earlier I even tried canceling the send print, and of course I had to force quit it in Task Manager. I started it back up and resent a vector test page. It sent again, no problem. But when I hit Start on the laser, it started lasering out the raster image that I was trying to send earlier, even though according to the laser, the buffer was empty. But of course when it got to last 5% of the image, it moved back to the top of the already lasered out area, and finished up the bottom there. HUH?

I guess my question is for those with this laser, or anyone that has experienced anything like this. What sending time should I be expecting for most images? Is this laser a lemon? Computer incompatibility with driver for this laser? Something that should have been setup at the factory that didn't get setup? I already had to align the laser when it got delivered, the red beam was over an 1/8" off from the cutting beam. So far I am not pleased with the performance of this product that costs over $13,000.:mad::confused:

The image is 1 bit Bitmap 20.36" x 14.12" at 300 PPI. Sent to the laser at 500 DPI.

[James Jaragosky]

Pinnacle is a large and reputable company and they have a good sales support system. my first suggestion would to use this support as you certainly must have paid for it! the laser you mentioned is not cheap by any standard.
also just a guess here on my part but have you checked the manual to see the proper procedure for sending raster images to your laser? ie.. is the file in bmp format. lastly most people in this industry or at least those here, use Corel draw or other Corel products (the latest being Corel x3) to load files to their laser. i am sure that others will pipe in and try to help. i hope you get the hang of it.
jim j.

[Chad Voller]

Thanks for the fast response. After 20 minutes the file finally transfered to the laser. It is burning away right now, and looks like she'll be working for a good while to finish it. I tried various formats, BMP, PSD, and even the dreadful JPG. The last one I did try was PNG, and that's the one working at the moment. I usually use PNG for everything I do that is not vector. It's lossless compression and works great for 3D work and print, so I figured to give it a try with the laser. I'll read over the manual again on raster graphics and see if there's something I missed causing the long load times.

Laser Master must rework the file somehow when it is sent to the laser, increasing the file size. I'd hate to add and learn another software package to the half dozen other packages that I'm using at this job. But if it speeds up the process, I'll put the request in to the boss.

We do have the adobe suite, so we may try putting that onto the dedicated computer for the laser, since all the packages we design are created in Illustrator and InDesign.

[Steven Smith]

Chad how are you sending to the machine? If serial you know that's going to be slow. Check your settings for the port, it can only go to 57600. I was going to set up another computer as shared printer so I can use it's parallel port but haven't gotten to it yet. My main computer has only usb, so I have to use the usb / serial converter. I was told by Pinnacle support a usb to parallel converter will not work.
I've had large files take nearly half an hour to send. All things considered, I'm fairly happy with the Pinnacle.

[Chad Voller]

Steve, it's connected to the serial on the back of the PC right now. There is a parallel port available, should I be using that instead? I didn't think there'd be that much of a difference between the two, but if there is I'll switch it.

It's been ages since I've ever had to connect anything to the serial or parallel ports on any computer. Everything now days is network, USB or Firewire. I'm sure it's cheaper for them to manufacture the driver board with serial/parallel compatibility. Just wish they'd take advantage of the new technology, that's really not that new when I think about it.

It's still lasering away right now and everything looks good. I'm just testing out full resolution on a test piece of wood. It's not for a job, I just wanted to be able to get things figured out before we got a job that required rasterized graphics. We'll just have to figure in the extra time waiting into the price of the finished piece.

I guess it's good to know all of these little details before we quote someone a price and a date of completion and can't deliver on either. Live and learn.

[Jason Hubanks]

Chad,

I have the same machine M-30. I use USB to serial conversion. It is still slow compared to Ethernet. It takes about 3 min to transfer 300kb. The machine doesn't have Ethernet so the fastest will be USB to serial.

Thanks
Jason

[Bruce Volden]

Chad,

THAT'S your problem, the interface!! Serial is very slow!!!!! Parallel will be faster. But better still would be an ethernet connection. My old LMI is a serial interfaced machine and I only use that for volume production on the same stuff (back when I was busy). My newer (10 year) LMI is parallel and smokes the serial. The newest, Epilog TT, is 10 base T and the file ALWAYS beats me across the room!!! I would recommend getting and old junkie computer and setting it up as a network print server, at least with that configuration you could go on to other projects while the "server" is handing the file off to the engraver:)

Bruce

[Chad Voller]

I'll come in this Saturday when I have more free time to burn and switch the cables from serial to parallel and record the difference in time that it takes to transfer a file.

The computer we are using is a retired render grunt from our render farm. A single core doesn't cut it now days for rendering frames for the animations we do, so we moved it to our production room. No work, other than sending to the laser, is done from this computer. It is not wired up to the network yet since it's on the other side of the building, so for the time being I have to run from my workstation to the laser PC with a memory stick. We don't have wireless access to the network either, and we won't anytime soon.

Thanks everyone for the replies. If everything goes right, my contribution will be given at the end of the week. I'm glad I ran across this forum, as you guys seem to be on at all times of the day, everyday.

[Chad Voller]

Ok, I'm a day late at doing this, but I've been in work everyday since the 26th of December, we were just too busy with other things....

But I did what I said I would, except with a smaller file so I wouldn't have to wait and time a file for 20 minutes, dying from boredom.

I sent a file (a picture of the moon from NASA's website) to the laser, with the serial cable connected. The time to transfer the file was about 4 and a half minutes. I then shut everything down, switched cables from serial to parallel, changed the settings for the printer driver COM port, (very important, and almost forgot to do). Resent the same exact file to the laser. And WOW!!!! 50 seconds! Holy crap, that was a huge difference!

I did not even try the USB to serial converter for one reason, the weakest link. USB is fast, far out performing either serial or parallel. But the problem comes on the laser's side. The serial connection in this laser is constricted to the ancient baud rate of 57600, no matter how fast USB is, or will become. It's like a firehose, filled with high pressure water, but at the tip you have a garden hose nozzle. Your flow is only going to be as fast as what the tip allows. Not really the same, but you get the idea. I could be wrong, but this is the logic I used....

Thanks Bruce for your information, I probably wouldn't have tried this without reading it. And also, as I said I would, I made my contribution. Sure, I could have made the bare minimum, but I figured $20 is a small price to pay for the hours I could have spent researching or sitting on hold, dinking through the process with someone on the other side of the country. And I figure I'll be using more tips and tricks found on here.

Now we will have more time to see the laser work, instead waiting for it getting ready to do the work.