Hi, when I start engraving an image my (eleksmaker diode-)laser starts of a bit too slow.
Which results in a darker engraving at the start of the picture. After a while the machine starts to move at the right speed and finishes the engraving correctly.
I have a feeling this has got something to do with all the data being processed, and my laptop may just be a little too low on memory. With a bigger picture it can take up to 10 minutes before it moves at the right speed, with a smaller picture it takes less time. But I always have this darker section in an image.
Does anybody have an idea how to fix this?
Thanks in advance.
Hi Marco, can’t you give a little more information?
which version of the operating system, memory and so on …
how big is your job / picture?
I use windows 10, not sure about memorysize. The size of the picture varies from 10x15cm to 40x30cm, butdoesn’t really matter. It happens with all sizes.
I did find some bad wiring today, which I fixed, and after that it seems to be working fine (so far).
40x30 cm sounds like really big pictures but windows 10 and 4Gb memory should probably do it.
What is the process time for this size?
It is good that you may have found the error on your machine.
When I make pictures, they are maximum half as big as yours and it takes me two times a 30 min. But the conversion to g-code goes fairly fast and I only have approx. 4-6 sec. delay in entering the g-code to the laser.
(my data: Elektmaker, mana se, 5 watt diode laser, Windows 7 with 4 Gb RAM)
I guess I should have 4Gb RAM as well.
A picture sized 40x30mm probably takes 6 to 8 hours to be finished. Laser is 2,5W. Speed set to 6000mm/s and power 12,5% gives me the best result on 254DPI.
So far the problem was solved, but not sure if it stays that way. The broken cable shouldn’t affect the speed, but only the laser. I’m gonna try some more engravings in the evening. And I will have to get myself some new cables, because this is the second one I’ve had to fix in about two weeks.
Hi Marco, today I have tested with a ca. 5 mb image file, rasterizing also takes longer time here, about 3-4 min …
Btw. I do not understand your laser settings, I run my 5 Watt laser with 800 mm/s at 30-40% power, you write 6000 mm and 12.5% power…???
Sorry, my mistake. My settings are 6000mm/min, that means 100 mm/s. Increasing doesn’t seem to speed up the laser. And with that speed 12,5% - 15% power gives the best result.
I wish I could speed it up somehow, so I could do more than 2 large pics a day.
I gues I need to play around with it some more.
Maybe there are some other settings I need to change as well. Is it posibble for you to send me all yor settings (screenshots)? TIA
The $110 and $111 settings in GRBL are the maximum travel speed for the device. You might be able to increase those to get faster moves, but you’re going to hit the processing speed of the Mana SE shortly, if you haven’t already. It’s an 8 bit ATMega processor (like an 8 bit Arduino) so it’s just not very fast.
Laser engraving photos requires processing a lot of GCode very quickly.
The second lap with speed 1250 took 91min, which is also a long time for a 200x55 mm image. The result counts and it is beautiful. Of course, you can’t get rich with this recurcer effort, but you get plenty of good time with this hobby.