[sidi_steve]

I paid the posted rate:
http://www.iehk.net/Products/IE300.html
$1199 + $250 shipping

After I bought it, I got a quote for less from:
http://www.hxlaser.com/en/products/chapter.htm

And supposedly, the software at HX does support vector AND raster images...

[hkxy]

Sidi_steve:
Your this machine,He uses the software and the PCNC controller and the computer and the WIN software work,The old machine uses HPLI,PLT,Now has the new machine,Uses DXF,PLT,BMP,JPG,Even more the senior software may in CAD,POTOSHOP,In CORELWAR works directly,Also may differentiate the color the use

Is not,Your software is specificEach producer's software name all is different,But it is a pity,They have established the different controller,Therefore the software cannot use together,This is possibly the commercial interest consideration,In this price machine,The software all is the difference not big,Because this machine is designed the manufacture circle the seal,Therefore this is his key point,If you need to make other artwares,Advertisement advertisement POP...,Then you need the senior machine,Although his price is not very high
If this small machine price is USD900,Then the 600*900 millimeter laser possible price is USD5000-8500,But a 1200*800 millimeter machine is possibly USD6500-13000,And this reference price contains you to be able imagine possessing to cut the machine about the laser the components and the software,Certainly each country can some differencesSpecially software language and price,As well as customs' outer covering packing

Certainly these machines sold to outside China the local price to be able to be higher than this locality,The reason is the exportation product has the special cost, They will not like for these small prices machines providing later to serve,I in mine company,Is attempting to change this condition,Provides the service for mine customer,Possibly is the network,Returns to the repair,Or goes to your depot level maintenance,Certainly in permission scope,And I am this goal diligently,Once attempted seeks the proxy sale and the service means,But it is a pity I not found the appropriate agent in US and Europe


Diarmaid:
You saw comes from China's middle to this machine,Wuhan Hubei,There is center laser 1.th several areas of concentration
This machine is used for to make the handicraft
Regretted,I cannot understand you % digital meaning

If you have the question,Welcome to inquire me











China's laser sale merchants,Factory,Now all busy deals with the product order the time pressure,Actually I am the hope provide us to the world the outstanding machine,Possibly lacks in the world advertisements propaganda and the introduction,I also hoped can sell this machine to world each country,Our product superiority is,The product quality is good,The price is low,Although the present also has the service and the time question,But this machine so long as cannot have the question according to the correct operating procedure work,Moreover I instruct my customer operator's correct method of work,I hoped can have many friends to act sells my machine,With purchases my machineAnd has more new products to produce by the unceasing design.

If you have about the Chinese product question need to consult,I can answer you with every effort,But my English too bad,Or you attempt yours question narration are more detailed,Perhaps I may understand

[ViperTX]

hkxy....are you in Hong Kong?

[hkxy]

I live in Beijing

Moreover I have the manufacture sale service in QINGDAO SHANGHAI BEIJINGMainly is the manufacture sells LASER to cut machine,3AXIS-CNC,DIY-CNC.

Moreover I also want to act sell come from American and Europe's CNC product,If you have the cargo which may sell,Also may ask me to sell in China,For example CNC controller,Electrical machinery,CNC components....

[JoelDirn]

Hi Steve,

Earlier you said the machine would work from a .PLT file, is that correct?

Have you tried configuring your HPGL driver to print to a file?

Then you would hopefully be able to plot from CAD to file, then dump the file to the laser.


- Joel -

[sidi_steve]

Joel -

I wish it would work from a .PLT

There are 2 output options:
1)The software can output directly to the machine
2) The software can output to a .PLT file

I have tried many, many ways to plot one of those files, but no dice. The file is standard HP-GL (very simple X and Y coord data and pen up + pen down).

But apparently the device itself does not run directly on hpgl.

So, what I am hoping to do is redirect the output from the port to a file. Then I can read the file and determine what it is that the device is expecting...

Steve

[Salty72]

.

[Mick Molloy]

I am looking for a machine to cut balsa and ply wood as well as etch various products... I hav looked at Epilog but they are dear...

What do you sell hkxy???

[hkxy]

I sell the machine which the laser cuts,Cuts the size is the 1200*800 millimeter,
Also may defer to you to request to make 3,000 millimeter below the laser to cut the machine,He may relaxed cut balsa,I have the experience,Because I use this machine building model airplane

[scott wiggins]

I might be in for one of these, if the price is right and the software is acceptable.

[hkxy]

price and the software is acceptable

[miljnor]

hey has anyone used these machines to engrave on chrome or polished aluminum?

If so what steps do you have to do the make it work? ie cover with paper, lamp black or what not.

How many watts would you need to cut tin foil type thickness in metal? (don't answer unless you done this, as I realy don't need speculation)

Also Sid_steve when you engraved the mirror/glass for Dairmaid did you run the laser over the whole surface or just on the features?

if you ran it over the whole features, why? and will it let you just engrave on the image itself?

edit: i looked at the image more thuroughly and I see that it was run as a negative image. Can you run it as a positve image where just the bird and leaves are engraved?

[diarmaid]

.

[sidi_steve]

Hey Miljnor -

In this case, the laser engraved where the image was light in color and it did not engrave where the image was dark. There is a choice. There are 2 check boxes (click on one and the other goes unchecked) One check box is for "cave" and one is for "convex"

Here is what the manual says:
Convex/Cave: Two kinds of mode of the seal, choose the mode needed;

I forget which option I chose, but one engraves the black part of the image and the other choice engraves the white part of an image.

I will test on alum foil later

steve

[miljnor]

I was reading an artical on focal length and watts vs focal point size and focal length, It said you need a certain power level to burn through certain materials.

So a XX watt laser is needed to burn thru X material at XXX focal point size (something about engergy density). So I think a 40watt laser will never be able to get to this energy density, because you can't focus the beem tight enough, due to Wavelength of a C02 laser.

I am more interested now in if it will engrave a chrome part without a laser marking compond (acts similarly to toner from a laser jet but wont come off of metal surface).

[scott wiggins]

Can the engrave a cylindrical object, such as a glass, or is it limited to flat plates?

[sidi_steve]

Hi Scott,

I suppose the best answer is that it is limited to flat surfaces. Likely, that is the only answer.

But I have been giving the cylinder engraving idea some thought.

Now the rest of what I am going to say is just putting out an idea, but one I am not about to embark on right now nor is this any kind of recommendation.

-----The following is just an idea! Be careful! High Voltage! Laser beams! Yeah yeah--


Basically, this thing consists of 2 motors and a laser. The two motors control X and Y. Well, if you were to engrave on a cylinder, all you would need is 2 motors, right? This will depend on the orientation, but one motor could control the rotation of a cylinder around the Y axis while the other controls Y. If you were to find another stepper motor that was wired the same as the existing X motor, then you could simply unplug the existing X and plug in this other motor and you could use that for your rotation.

One of the motors is attached to the board via thin ribbon cable (which also carried the limit/home lines) but the other motor has 4 wires and is plugged in to the board via a connector. It would be easy enough to pull that connector and plug in a different motor.

Making something to actually rotate your cylinder would be easy enough. This would be nearly the same as the 4th axis for an XYZ cnc machine and plans for a 4th axis are just a google away.

Since you would have no planar X control while the rotary device was plugged in, you would have to manually position the X position. (You may even have to manually move the X position into and then away from the home position during the init phase so that the home switch gets toggled)

The next challenge would come when trying to design the image you want to engrave. The engraver can only be run with their software, which of course is expecting you to engrave upon an XY plane. But, if you plan ahead and can calculate the circumference of your cylinder, then you could design something that would fit nicely on a cylinder.

I can't remember the focal length of the focusing lens, but it is fixed and it is designed to move about in XY planar fashion of the engraving surface. Let's say for this discussion that the fixed distance the lens is above the surface is 3". As long as the surface of the cylinder is that same 3" distance away from the laser head, then it should engrave well.

So, could you do it? Yeah, I think it could be done. Is this a supported "off the shelf" feature? Nope. And of course, your results could be either glorious or disastrous, depending on your skill (and luck) with electronics and the rest of it. Like I said, it's just food for thought.

[scott wiggins]

It seems that a rotary table is what is needed and probably wouldn't be feasible given the space constraints in the case. See to be quite a limiting factor though.

Given your current machine and the limitations that you have would you be able to recommend any others?

I know that I would like more power though for a deeper etching in some materiels.

Please describe the problems again with glass. Was it tempered? Did you pulse it to control heat, can you even do that?
Thanks,
Scott

[sidi_steve]

Hi Scott,

I haven't spent too much time trying to engrave, so I may not know all the options. But it certainly doesn't appear that there are any choices for pulse settings.

The glass was whatever came from a broken flatbed scanner I had. I don't really know any of its properties, but it was an HP3200c scanner. So, the piece of glass was already broken, but appeared to have no cracks in the area I was trying to engrave. The heat from the engraving process probably caused a pre-existing crack to expand and further break the glass.

I am probably not the right guy to ask about which engraver would be right for you.

I am sorry that I can't be more help. Good luck

Steve

[sidi_steve]

Hey Gang -

I guess I have to eat a few of my words and take back what I said. Here goes.

If you have been keeping up with my postings on the subject, I bought my Ink Express IE 300 mini laser engraver with the primary goal of cutting vector based files. I like gears, so the plan is to cut plastic gears using .PLT files.

My initial attempts to do this were less than successful and I wrongly assumed that it would not be possible to cut vectors properly from within their software.

Now, I will say that it would be easier and offer more control if one could cut directly from DOS using PLT files, but you can't and that is a sore point.

But, getting back to what you CAN do from within their software...

At first, I made a mistake. It appeared that the only image files it could accept were BMP and JPG. There is an image converter portion of their software. It will convert .PLT into BMP, but the results are not great. Not the way to go for precision.

But, I recently discovered that in the image import part of the software, it will import .PLT directly, without conversion. It is a little funny, because there is a dialogue box that says image.BMP even though you are looking at image.PLT on your screen. So, I wrongly assumed that it was doing a conversion. The fact is, that it is making a BMP, but that is only for viewing. So, even though it looks like a low-res pixelated (aliased) version of your vector file, it will actually cut as a vector.

But no so quick. You go to the output screen and click on "outline" (which is their vector mode) and then "output". At this point, it will only cut out part of your file. And thats all you get. The user is totally reliant on how their software interprets your .PLT

I knew my .PLT file was good, as I also have an HP compatible plotter and I could completely and accurately plot my .PLT files on the plotter. And when I open them in the laser engraver software, you can SEE the whole thing, but it wouldn't cut the whole thing. It would typically get hung up on the edges.

I spent DAYS working on this, but then realized that their software wasn't really trying to calculate some edges. Hard to explain, but for any single image, the software my fail to edge detect where the edge is close to (or falls on) the outer edge of the image.

So, in the case of a .PLT file, it was simple enough to introduce some bogus lines that were outside the area that I really wanted to cut. This worked, but not always.

I finally stumbled onto a solution where the bogus lines sort of defined the corners of an image larger than I was really trying to cut. And by doing short bogus lines, then when the software is scanning for edges, it finds the edges I want. Hard to explain, but it works! I am finally cutting gears, using their software. For what it's worth, it sometimes finds the bogus lines and cuts them too, but sometimes it doesn't find the bogus lines.

Yeah, a long and complicated tale. I had to tell ya that it CAN be done!

I hope the pics help!

The first represents a PLT that successfully plots on HP plotter.
The second shows a possible result of that PLT with engraver
The third represents a PLT file that successfully cuts out a gear with engraver!

It's those lines outside the cutting area that let the software see the edges of the image.

It really can be done!