Ebay fiber laser, I'll be the guinea pig--

Looks almost identical to my Ray Fine except my column is on right of the base. Column mounted head is great.

So, I'm having the expected problem of not being able to run both lasers on one computer. So I just installed an XP virtual machine in my garage Win7 'puter. This will work as long as the Win7 sees the 2 dongles as not identical. Everything's going okay except that as soon as the VM fires up, the mouse goes stone dead on the host side, and half-dead on the VM- half dead meaning I can actually use the mouse, but it's 'blind', the arrow doesn't move! Never had that happen. Me & computers just don't get along...

The mouse problem was a VM capture issue, I was having it capture when I didnt' need to...

I DID figure out how to run both lasers using one computer via virtual machine, but took a bit of trial and error. The VM was loading the dongle driver for the old machine. The new machine's dongle is 'built in' and doesn't load as a driver, took me a few minutes to figure that out ;) -- And the VM was capturing both machine's mainboards. Once I figured all that out, got it to go! Still, there's a specific procedure to follow, but it's simple: start XP, then turn on the machine. Won't work if the machine is on first, won't find the dongle.

Now I'm dealing with networking nonsense...

Curious what brand laser is in the unit? Did the ad specify Max or Raycus?

it's a Max, which is what's in my Triumph.

and I AM having (edit: had) a slight issue: The foot switch didn't fire the laser. It DOES fire my Triumph's laser, so I pulled the covers, traced the wires which go to one of the 2 plugs that connect to the laser control board. There IS continuity when the switch is pressed at the plug terminals, so I'm kind of thinking the laser board might need replacing...

I emailed the seller last night, and got a response a couple of hours later, he would like to see a video of what it's doing/not doing...

So I get online and find these cards for sale on ebay, and the ad has wiring diagrams for the plug connectors. And I'm looking at the diagram, and I remember that the pins I checked for continuity were both on the 7-pin row, but the diagram shows one of the wires is supposed to be on the 8-pin row--
pic shows this, the yellow arrows indicate correct wire placement, upper left ('remark'), and any ground on the bottom for the switch. My plug had the bottom middle okay, but the other wire was put at the red arrow. So I moved that wire from the lower right corner to the upper left corner where it should be...
Attachment 397525
And the foot pedal works now! :D

So I'll be emailing the seller back and I'll let him know what I found. Laser board okay, works for me!

I know this type of nuisance is a pain for most people, but it's hardly a deal-breaker for me. And this type of flaw isn't limited to e-bay machines. But the guy did get back with me in short order, that's a plus. :)

here's a video of me running both machines- I'm not much good at videos, fair warning... anyway, Triumph is on the left, doing the top of a part, takes 13-1/2 seconds, I move that part to the new laser to engrave the logo on one of the sides, takes about 5 seconds, then it goes into the 'done' box- while the logo is engraving (or just after boxing it) I grab a fresh part, at which time the Triumph is done. So I'm engraving each part twice, and getting almost 4 parts per minute. Since Sunday afternoon and the BIL running it today, it's earned 1/4 of its purchase price...

https://youtu.be/QQvcdDVunTs

Kev, you truly are a Guinea pig.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kev Williams

it's a Max, which is what's in my Triumph.

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A side note perhaps..... I have heard that the MAX lasers are troublesome, this based on much reading and research. I have read folks advising to stay away from them because they are unstable, whatever that means. I assume you would differ with the opinion to stay away from them?

I am of the opinion that many of the poor reviews of a particular brand of laser source are based on a bad experience with a machine as a whole that may have had little to do with laser source, but because it had a MAX laser in it, then it gets part of the blame.

This reminds me of something I heard years ago (facts may different these days ;) ) that Golden Retrievers log more human bites than any other breed of dog, which seems funny because they're not known as a biting breed. The reason is because there's so many of them, and by the sheer numbers, they log a lot of bites. Bites per capita, I'm sure will produce totally different numbers...

So, because there are likely a LOT of machines out there with MAX lasers in them, it stands to reason that just by their sheer numbers, reported problems will seem high...

--my opinions-- :)

Regarding personal experience, and of those of the laser owners on this public forum I've been familiar with for the past 6 years or so, I really haven't noticed many complaints about laser sources proper being unreliable regardless of brand. Most issues usually refer to electronic or mechanical issues, which I've had with both my fiber lasers- but the lasers themselves have never failed to fire!

The biggest "laser source" complaints I know of, by far, is Ebay! :D -- which is the whole purpose of this thread, to show that a good deal, with at least some tech support, can be had from an Ebay machine. So far, I'm quite pleased. :)

I am awaiting any further input regarding this machine....eagerly awaiting.

About the foot switch and the plug being wired wrong-- see the 'Chinese fiber laser control board' thread, the OP was putting in a new but different control board and wondering about plugs and wiring issues-- had he posted up his own follow-up 2 days earlier, I've have learned that my laser board was NOT wired wrong! It was actually wired correctly-- the only problem was the foot switch was de-activated in the software! My foot switch DOES work now, but strictly in a 're-marking' function, NOT as a 'start laser' function. It works, but the difference is that when 're-marking', there's no feedback to/from the computer, meaning there's no STOP function available. And, it doesn't engrave what's on-screen, it re-marks the LAST job. So, if you put a new job on screen and hit the foot pedal, the previous job will engrave! Good way to mess up someone's part!

SO then, as of now, there's been NO issues with the new machine, other than software settings. I'll be moving the wire back where it was and activating the foot switch in the software, as intended...

FWIW, I tested the old machine's software by changing the port setting, and sure enough, dead foot pedal!

(FWIW2, this is why I love having 2 of everything, I always have a working test unit to use to troubleshoot a non-working unit ;) )

Power note: The new machine engraves substantially LOUDER than the Triumph at the same settings, very aggressive. Been getting the same results at 60-70% power settings as the Triumph at 100%. Been wondering if I mistakenly got a 50w source, but it could also be the weird, smaller 150 lens; it focuses at about an inch farther away than my Triumph's 150 lens, but even so, it could be focusing to a tighter spot? That would up the power density somewhat... When I get some free time I'm going to do some side-by-side deep engraving..

Short version, I love the thing, it's already earned half it's purchase price and does everything my Triumph does. And I love the tower mount setup, makes quickie setups even quicker...

Yeah, I got pdf of instructions on my Ray Fine and really no additional info as to what each check box did. Guessed at the start IO being footswitch.
I'd bet the lens is the reason for your power increase. Possibly a different output source also. I've noticed in some specifications there is about a mm or so difference in the diameter of the actual laser output. Tighter output should equal less loss.

I moved the wire back to where it was, and after finding out the port number is NOT the pin number- port is 15, pin is 9- it's working as it should, foot pedal acts exactly as the F2 button.

--but-- now that the pedal works correctly, for some reason it's affecting the 'show contour' red-lighting; what it's doing is it runs one or two passes (depending on complexity), then it pauses for about 2 seconds, then runs, then pauses etc etc..? So the only way to get a constant running contour red-light is to turn off the foot switch. I'm sure it's just another setting, but no clue where to start looking! Doesn't affect the bounding-box red lighting, just the contour lighting...

As to the noisy engraving, seems it's due to a much smaller beam spot diameter- Just did a stainless job, couple thousandths deep to resemble stamping. Checked the cut with a 15x glass, and the .050 spaced crosshatch engraving looks like a chain link fence! I ran the hatch offset inward .015mm from the original border, and ran a 'mark contour' pass... at .015mm the engraving and contour pass should overlap, but there's a visible space between them! .015mm works out to .00059", pretty small! Need to tighten up the hatch ;)

I'm getting seriously behind on a few jobs around here so I'm about done with the updates for awhile, unless something else, good/bad arises. :)

any updates?

Yeah-- The thing works great! So great in fact that I'm beginning to think they DID send me one with a 50w source. It has a 150 lens on it, and with that lens it engraves nearly identically to my 30w Triumph using the 72mm lens! The 150 lens on my Triumph requires many more passes to get to the same engraving depth. Jobs I run at 100% power on the Triumph I'm doing at 40% power on the new machine. There also seems to be not a lot of variance from low to high frequency engraving, which would make sense with a 50w machine since (so they say) the lowest frequency the machine runs is usually equal to the laser's wattage, which if so, gives me a 50 to 80kh range...

Anyway, I've been keeping it busy so I haven't done much experimenting yet. If I have any complaint, it's with trying to tune the laser's TC start/stop times, been tricky to get the numbers right; size of engraving matters somewhat...

I recently engraved numbers on some hardened injection mold pins with the Triumph (before I got the ebay machine), the lettering height measured .012", in reverse deep enough to show up in the finished part. I ran a low-power 25x 3-hatch pass, and after repeating each number 75 times, they were perfect.

Compared to some machines I guess my machines could be considered toys, but the reality is, a 'not a toy' machine would do nothing for me except take a LOT longer to pay for ;)
(my ebay machine pays for itself every 2 weeks, and I'll likely be getting another one)