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