Fiber Initial Impressions PART II

I'm starting this thread in hopes Ross sees it :)

One of my customers recently bought a 50w fiber to engrave their parts. This was at my suggestion, as the wife & I have started our 'semi' retirement, which means keeping some of our best buck-for-the-bang customers. Since they received the machine they've been fraught with problems. For weeks I've been trying to help them get this machine up and running, which is usually a simple matter plug n play. And they now live 160 miles from me so it's all been via email till now. It took them several weeks just to get past the 'cannot finded dog!' screen. They got help with that from Cloudray, which may have sold them the laser, not really sure. Problem #1 turned out to be they got a 'basic' fiber laser, but the software stick came with the new EzCad Lite 2:14:16 version. Best I can make out, this version requires a special controller card designed for the 'lite' version, their machine has the basic 'old' card. Cloudray was able to get the lite driver to load and run the program, but it was hit and miss at best. Cloudray then got them a regular version that actually worked, but they were having engraving issues.

Last night they came by for a lesson in Fiber Laser and EzCad basics, they were here for 6 hours. They brought their laptop, which I connected up to MY 50w laser, and away we went..

Where on their shiny new Asus win11 laptop the EzCad that worked WAS I could never tell, but they did get it to load, once. I found out immediately that, IMO, Win11 is just 1 more step in a worse direction. It took all of that 6 hours just for me to figure out how to find basic files on the computer. But I digress ;) -- Anyway, every other time we tried to load EzCad the stupid Lite version would load, and none of us could find the version we'd just load prior. I have a stick with 2.14.10 versions saved for my 2nd Ebay fiber, for each of the 6 different lenses for it. The lens that came with their machine is a 200/290, so I plugged in my stick, and ran that program. Voila, it loaded, driver was fine, and a quick test proved their computer would at least fire MY laser.

After that I spent time loading up a copy of Corel X3 on their computer in case I need to file-share with them later. After that task was done, it was time to show them how to 'tune up' EzCad, and engrave one of their parts.

MY machine came with a stick loaded with 2.14.9, instead of 10, and until last night I'd never even used it. So I plugged it in and we ran EzCad from it.

I then went thru the basics of the F3 and paratmeters menus, hatch filling, colors, etc etc... Had some scrap black alum at the ready, input one of their drawings to test engraved, and specifically grouped JUST the "800" part of the phone number, and showed them how to hatch fill it. This 800 was maybe 3-1/2mm tall at best. Engraving settings were 1500 speed, 30% power and 30 freq, and I set the TS settings how I like them. Test plate was focused and ready, so we hit the F2 button...

What happened amazed me. And Ross's post immediately came into my head: "... It's Slower Than People Suggest"... uh, YEAH--??? The little 800, that should've been just zip-zip and done before you could say 'one one thousand', literally took like 4 seconds! The laser beam as it hit the aluminum was actually 'crackling' as it slowly plodded thru hatch fill. AND the beam was anything but bright! So I cranked up the power and speed, and that run was only slightly faster, and if it was brighter I couldn't tell. The engraving was only "ok" too...

Hmmm....

Shut down EzCad, then using my other stick I loaded up my 200/290 version, opened the job, adjusted the settings to 1500/30/30, same hatch, and this time engraved the whole 7 digit phone number. This time, less than 2 seconds, blinding bright, and the familiar zzzzzt zzzzzt sound when engraving instead of sounding something like a miniature arc welder...

I'm not sure who else has come across these issues, and I hope the settings I provided Ross help perk up his machine! I haven't had time to go thru all the parameters and settings differences between the two programs, but there's obviously something horribly amiss in my 2.14.9-stick's settings!

Kev Given my issues with getting the Right driver to load, I wonder if that's the problem? My EZCAD Lite says 2.14.16 with ?File Version 2.1.2.0 if that is any help. The 30 watt machine is either 3 or 4 weeks old. What Lens size do they have on theirs?

I'm wondering if the driver not loading automatically is just a computer-specific thing, maybe a service that on or off that should be opposite? Anyway, it was a learning experience for me, as now I DO know how to load the driver if it doesn't auto-load!

Still curious about the slow engraving using my 2.14.9 straight from the stick, I did back to back test runs engraving the same exact thing from the same exact jobsave and settings on both versions, using the rotary. The only parameter change made at all is I had to change the pulses-per-round settings in .9 version to 12,800 to match my rotary driver. Aside from that I just ran the part as per saved using both versions...

The parts: They're AISI 17-4 stainless, 40-45 hardness, the numbers are ~1/8" tall--
Attachment 488526
the upper was engraved using the slowpoke .9, I engraved the "-6" first just to make sure it WOULD engrave,
the "-5" was engraved on both, the bottom done with the faster .10 --

Left is the slowpoke, right is the faster--
Attachment 488527 Attachment 488528
As you can see, not much difference in the engraving quality, which surprised me!
Notice the depth, which is why a 50w fiber shines over a 30. To get this depth with my 30 takes nearly 4x as long...

As to the time difference to engrave a "-5" on each piece, the difference between versions .9 and .01, honestly it's ridiculous....
Attachment 488529

8 seconds vs 39 seconds?? (pretty good depth in only 8 seconds, no? ;) )

I haven't yet scrutinized the "deep-down" differences in the laser's settings between the two versions, but all the basic, obvious settings are identical. Need to do some research..

IF Ross's machine was running akin to how mine is working with the .9 version, it's no wonder he was perplexed at the speed!

>edit< I just ran a whole part using .10, which is numbers 1 thru 6 with a dash to their left- The entire part stop to finish, 27.44 seconds, a full 11+ seconds LESS than just the -5 before...

I wonder how Lightburn would do?

I would think running direct from a USB stick would be slow as your limited to the speed of the USB transfer which can be very slow if its not the newer C connection or USB 3.

EzCad is not a registry-dependent program, and runs just fine directly from the stick, the computer and it's USB connection to the laser are totally divorced from the stick. Far as I know you can pull the stick once the program starts and it'll work the same. The only downside to doing that is that the stick's folders that save any parameter changes, if any, won't be available and on shutdown any changes you made won't be saved. Could be the program may ask to save changes to your hard drive, but I don't really know...

The program on the USB stick still uses the operating system and computer CPU and access is limited by the speed of the USB connection. It also needs to access the USB port going to the machine,

I really haven't had the time to play with the fiber like I would like. All my extra time in the shop has been working on fixing a big sign which failed a couple of weeks back. I had it made from a wholesaler. Their mounting bracket didn't work. I made something up. It failed. I've been left fighting getting it fixed and it's been a lot of extra work because I'm really not setup to do that type of work anymore.

Anyway, I can definitely say that with EZCad the laser is slow relative to what I've seen people post. I ended up getting Lightburn and did some of the job over the weekend. It's not exactly fast, but I've gotten it down to doing a plate in about 20ish seconds. The letters are fairly tall and I'm doing a full border so the run time is definitely acceptable at this point. I also reduced the number of lines considerably. I think I was using .025mm before and now I'm using .05mm. I honestly don't recall.

Right now I'm in path of least resistance mode so I'll likely finish the engraving on this job in the next day or so. The engraving looks "fine". I'd like it to look brighter and better to be honest, but it's definitely acceptable.

If I'm being honest, I've had terrible luck buying equipment recently so I'm a bit tired of buying stuff people are raving about and I get it and it's "meh".