[diarmaid]

Thats an interesting one, although Im not sure of the difference between a regular laser engraver and a laser engraver specifically for seals....

It should be cheaper than the IE300, the cutting area is smaller. It also has a slower cutting speed and area than the 3040A. It doesn't say what type of files the Centronics Interface can handle, this might be interesting to know, anyone have any ideas?

If its not cheaper than the IE300 then I suppose you'd have to decide if your willing to sacrifice cutting area for the same cash in the hope of better service and quality.

Thanks for that miljnor, I hadn't seen it yet. Although its a bit too small a cutting area for me it might be of use to someone else. Im going to e-mail them and get a price and the file formats it can handle, just so the info's here if anyone needs it in future.

Bye for now.

[miljnor]

I am actually looking into getting the 6090a but Haven't ordered it yet. the shipping time still throws me off.

But then building one would probably take me a year as I haven't really had enough time to even finish my mill yet. (got to stop building RC airplanes! )

[diarmaid]

miljnor:
Did you get a price yet for the 6090a?

What is the shipping time and what part of the world are you in? (I forgot to ask about this)

[miljnor]

the 6090A is 4750.00 and shipping is 320.00 to Long beach harbor in California

estimated travel time is 35-40days

Not a bad price (if it arrives in one piece) the time to delivery was bumming me out but if I build it the time will be much longer. And I doubt the cost will be that much better (because I do everything a little overboard). I think I am going to order one tomarow after I get the damages from the plumber who is fixing my house

[diarmaid]

ooo...plumbers....expensive.....hope the old heart holds out when you get the 'good' news!

Can't wait for you to order, give us the full run down on how it goes and after it has arrived, it'll be good to compare the service to Ink Express.

Thanks and happy ordering.

[miljnor]

still at minimum 36 days for delivery so it will be awhile!

Old heart? damn I am not that old! If I wasn't married I could probably still get the young girls!

but don't say anything to the miss's!

:cheers:

[smparkinson]

Hi sidi_steve,
Well, my ie300 is now in Vermont with me, although not yet unpacked. But before packing it up, I just had to try to work out the bugs I was having with it.
First, I figured out how to set a relative home for the laser head, than I determined what my actual maximum work area was. I did this by trial and error with setting up page sizes. If I went too large, the head would go to the end of it's travel and make the machine gun noise, whereupon I would shut down the machine. When I powered up again, the head would go to home and I would start up again with a new page size. I don't have the exact size info in front of me, but I ended up with a work area about 7.75" x 10.5". I can live with that since I was thinking in terms of 8.5" x 11" when I bought the machine. Anyway, When I start at my relative home position with my maximum page size, everything starts working. A couple of things I did figure out were that if I am rastering I set it at maximum speed, but vectoring needs to be set at a speed of from 1 to 15 depending on what I am cutting. If I try to set it to fast for small circles or small fonts, the quality really suffers and the laser head seems to be fighting with itself to maintain position. Put another way, it seems like the X and the Y motion controls are somewhat overlapping and causing them to interfere with each other. Slowing down the speed seems to eliminate this problem, and the results seem to be pretty good. Now for my questions.

1) When setting speeds, there are 2 boxes to set them in. 1st and 2nd. Can you explain why there are 2 speeds? I thought maybe there was one speed for raster and one for vector, but it seems to me that I have to pick between the two. I haven't been able to make the laser do both in one job. If I have a file that calls for both raster and vector, I have to do it in two steps. First, output without outline, than output with the outline box checked.

2) Anytime I vector output, it always does the vector twice. I havent been able to figure out how to make it trace only once.

3) The most important thing that I havent been able to figure out, is how to import a filr from outside Moshidraw. No matter what I try to open within Moshidraw, I always get an error message telling me that the file is too big. I even tried to open a .plt file that consisted of one streight line, ans it still tells me it's too big. I could learn to live with some of the other quirks of this program, but I have tp be able to bring in graphics in order to do anything creative with this machine.

As usual, I very much appreciate any help you could offer. I'm sure you are right when you speculated about other people outside of this forum buying IE300's, but it sure seems like you and I have been shipwrecked with only each other on this island!

Stephen Parkinson
[email protected]

[diarmaid]

but it sure seems like you and I have been shipwrecked with only each other on this island!
Stephen Parkinson

Im here in spirit.....or maybe in a ship just off shore eating steak, drinking champagne, and observing your predicament!!

[smparkinson]

"eating steak, drinking champagne" sounds a awful lot like you got a better engraver. Come on down with us tightwads ans drop some change. A few nickels and dimes is all it takes to own a ie300

[smparkinson]

Hi Miljnor,
Im not telling you how to spend your hard earned cash, but if it was me I'd spend the extra $300. and get the 6090c with the 260mm upand down plate. It might give you some additional flexability in your work. My GCC Mercury had that feature, and it allowed for good beam focus at different depths of whatever I was working on. Either way though, I am envious of your choice of machine. It sounds like a heck of a laser for the price.

[miljnor]

actually I was going to get that as well but leo failed to quote that option to me.

still got to wait for the plumber to drop the hammer so to speak, it is taking a little longer than estimated (of course)

[diarmaid]

"eating steak, drinking champagne" sounds a awful lot like you got a better engraver. Come on down with us tightwads ans drop some change. A few nickels and dimes is all it takes to own a ie300

If only I had a yacht...then I could sell it and afford to buy a nice laser engraver . But for now the yacht, champagne and laser are only in the pipeline, and the pipeline for a yacht is more of a pipe dream!! I might stretch to some steak for dinner though.

[Aksess]

Hi guys I have been reading this forum for a few days now and have decided I want one of the ie300 laser machines. Maby try it at photo engraving like I did with my cnc router. I will be orderning one of the inexpencive machines in a few days. crossing my fingers it is not damaged in shipping.

[diarmaid]

Good Luck Aksess hope all goes well,
Please keep us updated.

[sidi_steve]

Hey Stephen -

I'll give it a go...

1) I am not sure why Moshi has 2 speeds. I wondered if speed1 was the top speed and if speed2 was an acceleration value. I guess I am no help on that one...

2) Vectors cutting twice... I am not certain, without seeing what you are trying to cut, why you are having this problem. First let me ask a dumb question...Is it really cutting the same thing twice? Or, in the case of a circle, is it cutting the outside of the circle, then the inside? If you could save out the file you are ttrying to cut and send it to me, perhaps I can see what is going on.

3) Importing files...."file is too big"...hmmm. I have gotten this error message, too. But only when the pictures were really too big. Or in the case of .PLT files, if any of the X or Y values were greater than the size of the image. When creating a new "seal" in moshi, the rectangle you create has to be larger than the pictures you wish to import.

Try this:

1 - create a new seal in Moshi with a size of 100mm x 100mm

2 - copy the following lines into notepad or wordpad (NOT WORD) and save as gearTest.PLT

IN;
VS10;
SP1;
PU381,368;
PD381,368;
PD368,368;
PU;
PU1618,1618;
PD1618,1618;
PD1618,1631;
PU;
PU1016,1381;
PD1016,1381;
PD1049,1314;
PD1064,1236;
PD1086,1228;
PD1144,1283;
PD1210,1318;
PD1237,1298;
PD1225,1225;
PD1190,1153;
PD1204,1134;
PD1283,1144;
PD1357,1133;
PD1368,1101;
PD1314,1049;
PD1244,1011;
PD1244,988;
PD1314,950;
PD1368,898;
PD1357,866;
PD1283,855;
PD1204,865;
PD1190,846;
PD1225,774;
PD1237,701;
PD1210,681;
PD1144,716;
PD1086,771;
PD1064,763;
PD1049,685;
PD1016,618;
PD983,618;
PD950,685;
PD935,763;
PD913,771;
PD855,716;
PD789,681;
PD762,701;
PD774,774;
PD809,846;
PD795,865;
PD716,855;
PD642,866;
PD631,898;
PD685,950;
PD755,988;
PD755,1011;
PD685,1049;
PD631,1101;
PD642,1133;
PD716,1144;
PD795,1134;
PD809,1153;
PD774,1225;
PD762,1298;
PD789,1318;
PD855,1283;
PD913,1228;
PD935,1236;
PD950,1314;
PD983,1381;
PD1016,1381;
PU;PU;SP0;

3 - Now go into Moshi - click on Image at the top - click on Image in the drop down - and then click in the drawing area (your 100mm x 100mm rectangle ). This should open the import dialogue. Select the gearTest.PLT

Hopefully, this plt should fit nicely within the drawing area. You can go to the image "regulater" on the left and type in 50 in the X box and 50 in the Y box and this should center the gear in the box.

Please let me know if this works.

Steve

[sidi_steve]

Hey Stephen -

In my last post, when I said "create a new seal" I meant to use this option:

(2)New empty：open a new plain working area - this will give you the option to create any size area you like - for this test, make it 100mm x 100mm

Good luck

Steve

[Aksess]

Does the ie300 machine compinsate for grey scale immages? meaning does it automaticly adjust the power for engraving a grey scale, going deeper the darker the line. How do you tell the machine where to engrave? Do you tell it where the center of the design is or tell it where the lower left corner is?

[smparkinson]

Hi Sidi_steve,

I appreciate your info, and I'll give your gear file a try when I get things set up again. On the subject of cutting vectors twice, it happened with any vector I set up, even just a simple streight line. Once I get going again, I'll figure it out.
One good piece of news regarding Ink Express. They now have the Moshidraw manual available in their download section. I gave it a quick look, than printed it out. Its 21 pages, and it looks like there will be soma good info in there. I glanced in the pages about importing images, and I think by using the manual along with your info while I'm actually using the machine, I'll be able to figure it out. I think you have to be a little creative in your interpretation of their instructions, as the translations are sometimes confusing.
I think you and I are the Lewis and Clark in the unexplored lands of Moshidraw and the ie300. But ya know, I actually think this will turn out to be a pretty good little piece of equipment when it all shakes out. Thanks again, and I'll keep you all posted!

Stephen Parkinson
[email protected]

[smparkinson]

Hi Aksess,

You may want to wait a little while before getting an ie300, or maybe you would like to join us explorers and get your feet wet. I paid $999. (& $279. shipping) for mine. I know there are other companies offering similar laser units for less. On the other hand, you know that sidi_steve and myself have both purchased ours from Ink Express, and the fact that we at least received our units might give you a little extra comfort as opposed to ordering from another company. You have to make the call on that.
As you probably know from reading our postings that we both had some minor headachs in getting our machines up and running. In both our cases we had to deal with problems with the power supply being broken when we received them. I also had to replace the exhaust fan that came with mine, and I got no "after the sale" help from Ink Express. But I have to say, that for around $1,300. total, I still think it's a pretty good deal. As far as Ink Express goes, they shipped it super fast and they didn't vanish into thin air after getting my money. And frankly, I didn't really expect much help from them after the sale.
Anyway, I wish you all the best if you decide to spend your money on one of these lasers. Do your homework and check out what else is out there though. If I had to do it again, I think I would have probably gone for the model 3040 from Redsail. It's about double the price, and offers about double the work area of the ie300. And they use a different software called Easycut, which sounds like its a lot better than Moshidraw, which comes with the ie300. From what I've been able to find out, Easycut is from Germany, and their English version is probably pretty good. Best of luck!

Stephen Parkinson
[email protected]

[miljnor]

if your not comfortable with Inkexpress and want to try another redsail has that same unit as I posted earlier. Don't know the price but here is the post I made earlier:

Also just clicking around the redsail sight I found this:

http://www.hflaser.com/wsyzj.html

which looks Identical to the ink express machine. So you might be able to get that machine for less than the 3040a Through these guys.

They use a differntly named program so it might offer a differnt maybe bettter solution. but then again maybe not.