Boss LS-3655 speed won't go above 1200mm/s

Community Laser Talk
1

Hello,

I just joined the group and this is my first post! looking forward to learning how to best use my new Boss LS3655 and learn from the community as I get started:)

I am just getting started and a few days in. I plan to start using my laser to engrave coated metal like business cards and expand from there. I purchased the upgraded Turbo hybrid servo motors for my LS-3655 which Boss says can raster up to 2300mm/s. However, whenever I try to set a file to a 1500mm/s, the laser drops back down to 1200mm/s on the display. Any idea why it may be doing this and how to update it to go the full 2300mm/s? I got the turbo hybrid servos to quickly engrave a large number of parts, but so far have only been able to use a bit more than half of the advertised speed.

Thank you!

2

Given that you’ve paid top dollar for a really nice built-in-USA laser, IMO you should ask their USA-ian support folks to explain why the reality doesn’t match the claims.

It’s most likely a configuration parameter in Edit → Machine Settings, but they should be able to point right at it.

3

Thank you, I’ll keep trying to get ahold of them, but for as much as they advertise their USA based customer support, they have been quite difficult to get ahold of so far.

1 Like
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  1. what are you trying to do at that speed?
  2. Jobs usually run slower at very high speeds.

Is this is a glass tube co2 laser?

:smile_cat:

5

That is … discouraging. Let us know what happens.

While you’re waiting, go to Edit → Machine Settings → Vendor Settings and take a look at:

  • max engraving speed (if you can find it)
  • max speeds for the X Axis and Y Axis

I assume the controller has a similar config layout as a Ruida, but I may be completely wrong. If I am, take a few screen shots of what you see and we can look them over.

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Doubt the Y axes is rated near the X axes… I could see these speeds for moving around between actual lasing operations.

@Chris89 can you also note the acceleration values for these axes when you’re in the Machine Settings?

If it’s displaying 1200mm/s in the display, it sounds like that’s the upper limit set in the controller.

Here is the site, they claim Lightburn compatibility…

:smile_cat:

7

I am going to be engraving coated aluminum for engraved metal business cards. I am likely to be using the full 36" x 55" bed for 250 cards at a time (minus whatever width on the X axis that’s needed for acceleration). I’m looking to get the rastering speeds up as high as I can while maintaining a good quality engraving. I’m still working out the print settings including speed.

Boss did pose a video showing an engraving at 2000mm/s vs 400mm/s and it went about 4x as fast to raster a good size image. I’m sure there’s some limit, but with a large working area, the higher speeds should go faster in theary even with a wider buffering zone for the laser head.

It is a 105W glass tube CO2 laser

8

Will do, Thank you! I’m stuck at my day job, but will get this later this evening. I appreciate the help.

The Boss laser seems to be good quality, but since ordering I’ve had alot of trouble getting order updates and the delivery was over a month later than expected. Since I’ve had it for a week now, I haven’t gotten a single response from Boss about a few questions I had after reaching out several times. Hopefully they are just very busy and will get better, but has been frustrating to say the least so far.

9

I’m interested in what kind of acceleration values you have. When you’re connected you can go to the Device Settings → Additional Settings and read the data from the controller. Lightburn uses this in preview preview to compute the total times involved by the job.

This is the difference between a 500mm/s and 1500mm/s. Note the overscan (red) spends less time over the work area than it does at the slower speed. On the bottom right it also shows the slower speed as completing the job in less time.

1500-500mm-s
1500-500mm-s2593Ă—1055 98.5 KB

This is a change in acceleration from 40000mm/s^2 and 6000mm/s^2.

6k-40k-acceleration
6k-40k-acceleration1229Ă—932 291 KB

You might ask Boss what the response time on their lps/tube is.

The normal lps has a maximum placarded response time of 1mS (1/1000 second). If we use this as the basic value then at 1000mm/s the fastest the tube can respond is once/mm or a dpi of 25.4, if you lower the speed to 500mm/s then you can toggle it twice/mm giving you the best resolution of 50.8 dpi.

Might ask them how this works at these high speeds…

Looks like a great machine, I’m saddened to hear you are not getting any kind of communications with them. Most of what I hear is a good response.

Good luck

:smile_cat:

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I found the settings. It had a max speed set to 1,200mm/s for the X axis and 500mm/s for the y axis. X acceleration is 10,000mm/s^2 an Y axis acceleration is 6,000mm/s. I changed the max X axis speed to 2,300mm/s as that’s the max advertised speed. I’ll get a test file made to try it out at 2,000 or so and see how it goes.

11

It had a max speed set to 1,200mm/s for the X axis and 500mm/s for the y axis. X acceleration is 10,000mm/s^2 an Y axis acceleration is 6,000mm/s.

I’ll see if I can find anything on specific acceloration speeds for the turbo hybrid servo motors. Their marketing said the acceleration is much higher than the standard stepper motors, so those numbers may be low as well. That all makes sense that the high speed means more space (and time) to decelerate and change directions. High acceleration rates can help manage this if it’s capable. Also this effect would be minimized if engraving very large objects like I plan on that are taking up all of the available bed space as it will be engraving a much larger area for each pass.

If I can get ahold of Boss I’ll ask about the dpi at higher speeds. I’ll be doing testing as well as I still want to make sure I’m getting good quality engravings so if I need to slow the speed some I will. I’m shooting for as fast as possible with good quality. That’s why I optioned the servo motors for high speed and a more powerful tube of 105watt to keep up with the faster speeds.

12

Huh.

So the machine can run at the advertised speed if you know how to change the machine settings intended for basic configuration and double the limit.

Well, now you can have an amusing conversation with their tech support folks, should you ever make contact.

While you’re waiting, you can measure the scanning offsets at speeds I can’t imagine and fill in LightBurn’s table to crisp up your engravings:

Enjoy!

1 Like
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It seems so. I haven’t run it yet, but I did adjust the settings on the machine and it accepted it in the settings. That has me wondering about the acceleration settings as well. They may be from the cheaper stepper motors so mine may be able to have decently higher acceleration settings as well. If I can get ahold of Boss I’ll get those from them, but couldn’t find anything on acceleration settings online. I have been searching through this forum and found threads talking about acceleration and it sounds like I can experiment with increasing them until the machine sounds like it doesn’t like it or is missing steps then back it off a bit so I’ll do some experimenting with that.

Thank you for the Scanning offset adjustment info! I’ll get started on that :slight_smile:

So on a different subject, I’m new to laser engravers (tons of experience with 3d printing so there’s some cross over) and new to this forum. I’ve got tons of questions which I’m trying to search for answers before asking. Being that I have lots to learn and probably a quickly growing list of questions, is it better etiquette to start a new thread for different questions, or to keep it more conversational in just a couple of threads? I don’t want to flood the forum with beginner questions while I’m learning.

Also I really appriciate the helpful insights so far! I was worried that the community would be pretty small for this, and may not get alot of responses to questions but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the level of helpfulness in the forum. I’m sure I’ll learn a ton here and eventually will be passing on what I learn to new users later.

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That’s about as scientific as we civilians can aspire to becoming. :lab_coat:

Yes, because then the answer to this question isn’t buried in a discussion about those questions.

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Don’t follow your logic, why would they advertise 2300mm/s and set the machine to 1200mm/s as a maximum? Of course, none of these places stretch the truth.

If I have a 30mph governor on my car and the manufacturer says it will do 90 mph… would you say it will go 90? Maybe off a cliff…

Or maybe the hypotenuse rational? That doesn’t seem to work out either.

@Chris89 This is from the machines page…

image
image815Ă—425 63.9 KB

Seems odd they’d claim 2300mm/s when the upgraded servo can only do 1500mm/s… I can see why it’s limit is set to 1200mm/s

From what I’ve read I find it hard to believe it can actually run 2300mm/s along the X axes.

This is in an area that Mel Brooks called ludicrous speed.

This is my machine…

image
image867Ă—732 105 KB

My acceleration is 4.5 times faster with stepper motors… Of course I don’t have all the mass you have, but it’s acceleration values are actually pretty low, compared to mine…

Even it you could get it to work at these speeds, I don’t think it’ll do what you are expecting.

I set mine up to simulate your machine, using your acceleration values and raised the maximum speed to 4000mm/s, ran the preview on a 30mmX90mm box. I have a 5030 size machine, with the 30x90mm piece of material centered in the work area. The overscan already exceeds my work area… The green box is the work area. I had to zoom out of the preview to get all of the overscan visible.

This is the overscan running at 2300mm/s, takes a little over 7 minutes…

2300mm-s
2300mm-s1922Ă—1055 51.4 KB

At 1200mm/s the time is almost 1/2 to do the same job, takes 4 minutes.

1200mm-s
1200mm-s1922Ă—1055 76.3 KB

I don’t think this will ever make 2300mm/s

Just MHO…

You’re configuring it, it has no knowledge if it has a mouse in a wheel or a fast servo…

I hope you saved the original machines configuration before you starting changing things…

This whole thing has made me wonder.

I don’t think you are following me about the issues you’re up against, which is physics. You continue with the high speed visions, which I hope you see here, won’t work as expected.

We can only hope we’re missing something from Boss…

:smile_cat:

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I have the LS-3655, which they advertise faster @2300. The one you linked (HP-3655) looks almost identical but you’re correct is only advertised for 1500.

I’m not sure why they advertise 2,300 and also post a video on youtube of it running @ 2,000 but only set the controller to 1,200. My guess is that without the upgraded “Mach4” servos, the max speed is 1,200 so maybe they didn’t adjust the controller for the upgraded servo speeds. They also claim “higher acceleration” in some of the videos, but no mention of specific values. With the default speed in the controller set to 1200, I’m guessing the acceleration values may be based on the standard stepper motors as well.

I do have all of the original factory settings so I can go back if needed.

I do understand that the long overtravel makes for a much longer total time even at higher speeds and that the high speed only makes sense if the object being engraved is quite large to utilize more of the speed and if the acceleration values are high enough to limit the over travel. I plan on using the machine for mass production of parts where I’m utilizing as much of the print bed as possible. I’m not sure yet what the optimized speed would be vs usable bed space. I’ll need to hone in my settings for speed and acceleration first and make sure I’m getting good quality engravings. If I can do 2300mm/s but the quality of the engravings is not great, than I’ll of course be forced to slow it down. Or if the machine is beating itself up or not able to keep up. I’ll slowly increment up in speed then acceleration to see how high I can safely push it. With the 1400mm wide bed, I may be able to utilize some higher speeds and actually get faster prints. That’s not yet proven on my part though.

17

This acceleration calculator shows you how much distance overscan will take up with a target speed of 2300mm/s.

A 1400mm length axes, at 10,000mm/s acceleration reaching 2300mm/s… The blue line is your usable work area. Everything stays the same if you lower speed to 1500mm/s, just move the blue line down to the 1500mm/s marking.

image
image608Ă—596 37.3 KB

This shows you will loose almost 300mm/side.

1400mm - 600mm leaves you only 800mm of usable axes length. Out of 1400, that’s pretty poor. You can’t overcome physics… you’re only chance is to up the acceleration value. If you double the acceleration to 20000mm/s you will lower the overscan by half.

Even if you get to speed, how do you deal with the response time of the lps, which isn’t fast enough? Like feeding an audio amplifier an RF signal…

Unless Boss has some kind of technology we don’t know about, I don’t know how you can expect this kind of performance…

If you have a link to the right machine with a different servo, I’m glad to look. I got to this servo definition from the link using what you entered.

The upgraded servos in the link increase the speed by 3 times … from the standard 500mm/s motors stepper motors… I understand you already have these upgraded servos, maxing out the machines performance…?

Good luck

:smile_cat:

18

Well… Boss finally got back to me and I see the problem with why I couldn’t get above 1200mm/sec. They didn’t build it with the upgraded motors like I had paid quite a bit for :frowning: Unbelievably disappointed after waiting 3 months to get it. Working with Boss now to see what happend and how to fix it.

1 Like
19

Just a typo, could happen to anyone … :frowning_face:

If they send you a box of motors, you should also get a tech in the box to handle their installation.

It’s little things like that leading me to understand paying top dollar no longer buys much improvement over mid-grade stuff. Mid-grade is definitely better than bottom-feeder junk, but the benefit-vs-price curve flattens out quickly.

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It’s still seems odd to me that the site post shows a 1500mm/s servo motor for 3x speed … post 15… That’s still 1500mm/s a bit slower than the 2300mm/s they advertise…

Something here smells to me…

Good luck… we’ll be listening :grimacing:

:smile_cat: