Help with Chinese laser!

[Ryan Lanzel]

I am very new to the laser engraver scene, and even newer to the forum scene, although I figured this would be a great place to get started! Basically, we purchased a G-Weike laser from China in order to test out some product ideas in house cheaply and effectivly before investing more money into a higher end machine for our professional production. We have an 80W G-Weike LC1390 that uses the RDWorksV8 program to execute the artwork. I have run a number of tests with the machine on several substraits and have gotten to know it fairly well. As you probably know, a major downfall with the Chinese lasers can typically be the lack of customer support from the company, this is where you come in. When I scan, or engrave the artwork, I can adjust the speed in the program from 10 to about 200 with noticeable results, although when I turn the speed up higher then 200, such as 500 or 1,000 it seems to move the laser the same speed as 200, though the difference is that it swings the laser much wider then the artwork's perimeters. The higher the speed, the wider the laser moves. I realize some machines are just simply not as fast as others, although the speed at 200 just seems slow for a top working speed and is not effecient at all when it comes to large jobs. I feel like there must be something I am missing since raising the speed past 200 doesn't seem to actually speed up the production at all, rather it slows the overall job by wasting time moving past the artwork on both sides. The only other thing that I am confused about at this point is whether or not it is possible to convert the RDWorks rulers to inches?! Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

[Bill George]

First, get used to working in Metric, I do all my work in MM, for my 3D printer, Vinyl cutter and now my fiber machine. What your seeing is normal, the laser head can not stop on a dime and then reverse direction, I forget the name for it but I would call it overrun. The important part is I hope the laser stops firing at the proper time. When I was using my co2 machines I would place work in the center of the table and then zero at the upper left of the work. That allowed the machine to run faster, (I think) by having room in both directions to move or over run the work piece.

[Scott Marquez]

Ryan,
Search for and join rwworks learning lab, there is also a forum dedicated to your controller. It might be that your max speed is adjusted to 200 in your settings.
Scott

[Kev Williams]

Couple of things--

Check in your program to see what your max speeds are set at. I really don't think so, but yours may be set at 200. If it is, if you enter 500 speed, even though it won't run past 200 speed, the controller may OVERrun the edges the same distance as it would at 500... IF you find your max speed setting (X axis) is less than 800, make it 800. The Y axis max speed should be 300.
---ignore all the other speed settings, like 'space', 'acc', etc.

Another thing, how large an area are you engraving? Assuming your max speeds are correct, if you're only running up to 4" or so, then 150 or 200 speed will likely be faster than 400 or 500 speed because of the overrun. Slower speeds ARE faster in small areas. However, if you haven't already, do a test run of 30" across (just turn the laser off). If max speed settings are correct, you should notice a BIG difference between 200 speed and 500 speed...

[Ron Gosnell]

Ryan,
Search for and join rwworks learning lab, there is also a forum dedicated to your controller. It might be that your max speed is adjusted to 200 in your settings.
Scott

That is an excellent series every Chinese laser owner should watch. Somewhere around 80 videos now. If you really want to learn, watch these.

[Ryan Lanzel]

Thanks guys! Lots of good advice! I will take the day and experiment with everything you have mentioned and will check out rwworks learning lab for sure.

[John Noell]

I think that is supposed to be rDworks learning lab. If you have a Ruida controller you are probably using RDWorks (or the older version called LaserWorks) for yor software.

[Scott Marquez]

I think that is supposed to be rDworks learning lab. If you have a Ruida controller you are probably using RDWorks (or the older version called LaserWorks) for yor software.

This is correct, I couldn't edit my original post, thank you

[John Lifer]

Kev is correct in that my new laser was set at 200mm/s as max. I pretty easily bumped that up to 350 or 400. It will raster at 350.