Rabbit owners

[Pete James]

Try saving and importing your files in plt format. I have had almost no problems since we began using plt files.

[Dennis Watson]

What did you export the plt from? I tried it from coreldraw and the dashed lines were still solid.

[Dave Sheldrake]

RECI recently downlisted their tubes to reflect nominal cutting power rather than peak cutting power.

The W6 for example used to be listed as a 150 now though it's a 130 with the W8 dropping from a 180 to a 150. Same tubes but just the naming convention changed.

Running inside the warranty limits the W2 is an 80 watt and only really exceeds that if you pump it above what RECI recomend.

Ray is doing the right thing listing them as 80's as that is the nominal power people will get from them (makes a change from companies listing peak powers to try and win sales)

best wishes

Dave

HX1290,HX9060,HX1525,HX1525 (80 through 150 watt)

[Levi Chanowitz]

Try saving and importing your files in plt format. I have had almost no problems since we began using plt files.

I find that when I open the plt file in the LaserCut that the letters do not appear smooth.
Also I need to export the .cdr file at around 101% to get the correct size. If I export it as a .ai file, it looks smoother, but I get a whole slew of problems

Does anyone have any tips for me?

[Kalle Pihlajasaari]

Hi All,

This is my first (third try, reply-to-thread hides the posts deep in the tread view) post on SMC. I have been reading quite a lot on the various threads and a lot of good stuff. I cut and save bits here and there when I see interesting settings for cutting or marking so I can compare with my own setup later.

A while back I got two used unbranded Chinese lasers and bits for services rendered. We valued the deal at about US$500. One is a very well worn 300mm x 200mm 40W unit that has been used for making rubber stamps I think and is filled with a gritty ash. It powers up and homes and after installing MoshiDraw (USB to parallel converter and orange dongle) and messing about I was able to get it to go through the motions of cutting a box or rastering a small picture. The movement on the X-axis was erratic and after swapping motor leads I isolated the fault to the actual motor. On closer inspection there was a break in the motor wire where it exited the motor housing. I removed the motor and opened the back cover (I did not remove the magnetic rotor just in case the induced magnetism was compromised which can occur in high performance steppers) and after some careful wire splicing I had replaced all the wires (where two were broken and a third almost). After this the motion was smooth and I was happy with the electrics. A house move prevented much more experimenting as it was not able to be set it up in the dining room. I did test fire the laser once (no water connections or mirror cleaning yet) and it charred cardboard at the tube exit as anticipated. The z-axis is a tragic example of a copy of a scissor jack that can never work. It has a little air pipe that will direct smoke away from the beam but pretty rudimentary.

The other is a larger 500mm x 400mm unit that might fit a 40 or 60W tube but had no tube. It also has a different brand of controller that is direct USB and had an empty SD card hidden underneath. It had the protective paper still over the window when I got it and has only a few signs of wear. I think it was a demo unit that was cannibalised for the tube. I do not have a dongle or software for that controller and it ignores MoshiDraw but it homes the bed so all seems well electrically and mechanically. It sadly has a fixed T-slot bed that I want to change as I want to do more than rubber stamps.

In the mean time I purchased a LAOSlaser.org open source laser controller kit (it is a small motherboard that uses an Mbed controller) that will allow me to use the (CUPS) printer driver over an ethernet connection to send raster or vector data from most programs and throw all the Chinese controllers and software away. I have assembled the kit and have been anguishing about the Z-axis problems I have and trying to decide which machine to fix up.

Last week in exchange for hooking up a new HV PSU for a friend with different terminal connections he gave me the old PSU and two old Reci tubes. After dusting off and inspecting the tubes and reassembling the PSU I decided to make up a temporary HV cable and test them. Strangely both work and charred cardboard at the touch of the test button on the PSU. One is a V2 80W tube from 2011 that shows pronounced plasma burning of the bore and the other is a W2 90W tube from 2013 that looks unused. Both tubes were apparently run with tap water and have noticeable crystals in the cooling jacket (a couple of very badly translated sites suggest 20% Hydrochloric acid to clean out lime scale from the water jacket if it is impeding flow I have visible small crystals but it would not obstruct flow at this time, I just don't want the crystals to get stuck in a constriction of a pipe later so will look at cleaning before putting into service). I do not know what power they may have left in them but I plan to make use of them at some point. They were both supposed to be not cutting AND the PSU was supposed to be dead but who am I to complain. I took measurements of the tube housing of my bigger laser and I think I can get about 8mm of side clearance from the outer 80mm diameter glass if I raise the tube about 30mm higher than the 40W tube which will make for very tricky mirror mounts to clear the case when the gantry is in front. I would also have to add a 300+mm turret to the side of the case.

This has spurred me onto getting a laser going. I decided to move the 40W tube from the worn out smaller machine into the clean bigger machine and install my LAOSlaser board and get going. I am thinking that if the LAOS board drives the mecahnics nicely at a good speed and I get an adjustable bed setup I may make a piggyback housing for the 80W tube on the back (I am thinking of a 110mm drain pipe with an angle iron or U channel on the outside to maintain allignement, add a manual lever or rotary solenoid (I have in my junk box) to move the 40W mirror out of the way and switch tubes from the dashboard. It would let me use a 40/60W tube for engraving and then use a 80/120W tube for cutting. Obviously I would have to get a bigger machine soon after that but it might be a good temporary way to get used to the technology.

So that is my laser hobby in a big nutshell and hope you are all having fun with your gear.

Kalle
--
Johannesburg, South Africa

1 x 5040 Rabbit - 40W
1 x LAOSlaser controller
2 x 80W Reci tubes
1 x 80W PSU
1 x spare 3020 Rabbit - no tube
2 x spare 40W PSUs untested

[Mike Null]

Kalle

Welcome to Sawmll Creek. You are certainly ambitious and fearless as well. Good luck!

And, after reading your second post in another thread, quite competent.

[Brian Robison]

Hi gang, I got a 1290 in today, I'm going to be asking a ton of questions until I get up to speed.
I'll need to do a lot of reading. I'm used to my little Epilog and this is a whole different kind of machine.
I do a lot of engraving that uses greyscale and I'm not sure I can do that with this machine. Any one
have experience with it?

[Ernie Balch]

The rabbit wil not use gray scale directly, it will only handle 1 bit B&W. You can use the Gold method with dithering to achieve reasonable grayscale results in most cases.

[Brian Robison]

I've been using a method Rodney put on here from years ago.
I never took mine over to the photo program but I may need to
now.

[Brian Robison]

How is everyone dealing with no positive stop, 0,0 point on the machine?????

[Dave Sheldrake]

Use incremental mode Brian rather than absolute, the home position by default is top right, the 0,0 position is bottom left (never made much sense to me to do it that way but that's the way it is) top right has limit switches (mechanical or electronic) that it homes to and then steps in by a pre-defined amount (usually 10/10 x/y).

A small cross hair on the workpiece template can be used to align the head when using incremental mode to ensure location.

cheers

Dave

[Brian Robison]

Guys, I am totally lost today. Ray worked so hard to get the thing going at he didn't have a lot of time for training. I made some notes but I missed some crucial things. Like getting the job from the lasercut software to the machine...... DOH. I feel like an idiot!
The manual doesn't seem to be helping me a lot.
Dave, you mentioned incremental mode vs absolute for example, I have no idea where that would be.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Gimme about 20 minutes Brian I'll get something written up and posted with pics

cheers

Dave

[Brian Robison]

Thank you Dave....Please LOL

[Brian Robison]

I got it going, I had to restart the software and I didn't remember that I had to save the drawing first.
Baby steps....