Hi all, I bought a Chinese machine over a year ago and it was a nightmare. At first power on the E switch melted! I replaced it, then the AC input/fuse socket fried. I replaced parts, rewired many faulty connections and was finally making progress, when the temp dropped and my laser tube froze and shattered. Ugh!
To date I have replaced:
E switch
Power switch
IEC/fuse socket
130W laser tube
all mirrors (and one mount)
lens (three focus lengths)
power supply (Lightobject 100-180W)
Added CW5200 cooler
Plumbed in air from shop compressor
Endless alignment and tweaking. I think I am finally running a reliable machine with fairly predictable performance. Finding Lightburn along the way was huge! A real step forward for us.
Now, the old Windows 7 tower I use for the laser has started crashing. Because, well of course it has! I have built a new machine around Windows 10 to dedicate to the machine and have installed the latest Lightburn release.
My question is: is it mandatory to install RDworks to get the driver for the Ruida RDC6442S controller? I would be happy to avoid RDworks altogther if possible. The version included with my Chinese machine appears to be ahem not a fully supported release. Shady, at best.
If I can avoid RDworks and install the proper driver, will I have access to all the machine settings in Lightburn? IOW if I need to calibrate something or adjust “vendor settings” will I require RDworks?
Thanks in advance for any info. Love the software.
License question: do I need to deactivate the old Win 7 machine so I can activate the new Win 10 machine? I recall the license allows only 2 computers. I also have LB running on my Surface Pro for laying out jobs away from the laser.
It’s easier on us if you do it, but if you don’t have access to that machine we can do it remotely as well. And if you’d like to be able to use all 3, we will bump you to a 3rd seat for no charge.
Very generous, thanks! But that machine is going to the heap I think. Already deactivated it.
The Win 10 machine is connected. Thanks for the help! Working my way through settings. Now the machine tries to locate past the limit switches, makes an awful sound. Sorting through the origin settings…
They can be a little funky. I know I changed some of the wording on them in the hope of making them clearer, but it should be limit direction, to choose whether the + or - limit is being searched for on startup. Once you sort those out, the origin is the limit corner. I believe there’s one other setting at play, but can’t recall off the top of my head.
For that stuff it’s in Edit > Machine Settings, under the vendor settings portion below (rolled up by default). Make small changes, write back to the controller, and test. I don’t believe you can access those settings from the control pad.
I guess it’s just cursed. Was cutting acrylic and 5mm ply like butter yesterday. Now can’t go through at any setting.
29mA flowing through the tube.
Wow! There is a lot going on there. Not much is good. I managed to reset the origin, eventually. The panel thought the head was at X:10000 Y:10000 when it was in the origin position. Yikes! No wonder it was slamming into the frame.
Motion seems to be correct now, but even after cleaning and aligning (and measuring 29mA through the tube with my Fluke meter) it’s cutting as if set to less than 10% power. Ugh! I have declared this machine my nemeses.
Anyone in Michigan willing to come work on this thing, let me know. I’m at my wits end.