Hello from Germany

[Marian Scheja]

Hello everyone,

im from Germany and have already some experience in CNC-Milling and Lasercutting.
I am the person in charge for the Laser in our fablab.
We currently use a diy 60W LaserSaur wich is in our setup controlled by LinuxCNC with Lasersaur web-frontend.
I also have some experience with K40 conversions to GRBL, GRBL-ESP32, ... (i own two, in our fablab are some more)

Recently we got an old, but working, BRM-Lasers 125x90 with 100W tube and Leetro MPC 6525A Controller.
This is a huge Upgrade compred to our LaserSaur (Linear Rails, Servos, Z-Axis, Blade-Table option, Rotary-Attachmant, Raster-Engravin, more power, ...)
I replaced the Leetro Controller with the new Ruida RDC6445GT5(EC) with 5" Touchscreen.

Initial configuration went well, but the HMI does have some hiccups and a terrible (german) Translation in the current Firmware.
The english language is usable, but as the Laser will be used by many members and guests of our fablab, we prefer a german HMI-Gui.
Our laser will be secured by a custom RFID-Token access control unit, to allow only authorized users to start a laser-job.

I hope i can benefit from your experience with Ruida-Controllers and help others.
I am also open to help RD to improve the usability of this relative new product.

Best regards
Marian

[Pete Cyr]

Welcome Marian.Be sure to backup your vendor settings. They are easily lost and difficult to recover..

[Marian Scheja]

Hi Pete,

thanks for the advise.
As there are no valid settings for my machine i set up everything manually.
There are just some parameters i have no clue what they affect, but im sure i will figure this out with some help.

I keep a backup of my settings on paper and i also stored them in the controller for easy recovery as well as exported vendor and user files on my pc.

[Gene Uselman]

In the FAQ section there is a explanation of how to compare laser perimeters with Notepad++ You might select a machine Vendor file and compare it to yours to figure some of it out.

[Marian Scheja]

Hi Gene,

thanks for the tip.
Viewing the files in Notepad give me some corrupted characters.
I tried the Hex-Editor HxD which gave me more readable information.
I am also playing around in Excel VBA to read and parse the file, but i have not yet understand everything of the encoding.

RDV_Hex.png

The red part indicates the length of the following value including the separator (in this case 8 byte long)
The green part is a counter which just counts up "0F 07" and after that i do not understand the logic.
The blue part is kind of a separator between values. Often it is two bytes long, but not every time.

The files i saved with RDW8.01.54 contain more values then the file i got from here.
Maybe the Controller is different. My controller is recognized as RDC6445S. I'm on firmware 26.01.13, HMI 20.00.02

Using the Touchscreen-HMI i cannot access all parameters.
For example: I was not able to enable the "wind" output. But via RDWorks it was not an issue.

Also the Laser test fire button is enabling the output continuously.
I have no option to change this to a usable value like 50ms.
I am curious if this setting is handled by the HMI or the controller.
I think it might be set via the vendor or user-settings, because in the 6445G Manual the setting is read and written to the controller via buttons.

Any tips or advise where i can find further information?

Maybe i should start a thread regarding this Controller + HMI, because i found nothing regarding my combination.

[Gene Uselman]

You are using NotePad[++] right? I have never had a problem with it, and you can do comparisons [with a free plugin].

[Marian Scheja]

Yes i do, but it does not show the hex characters in a usable way which are not meant to be ascii.
It looks like this:

RDV_np++.png

I also noticed that the files i save with RDworks V8.01.54 via the vendor settings dialogue contain more data then is available in the settings.

I put in unique and recognizable figures in each parameter and analyzed the saved file.
It does contain a lot more values than could be set.
I wonder if there are settings i could change which are not available via RDworks or my Touch-HMI like the laser-test-button duration.

By the way, is there a best practice how to contact RD regarding bugs and optimization? Or better ask Cloudray?
There are quite a bunch of major issues with the HMI.

[Gene Uselman]

We must be talking about different things? This is a screenshot of NP++ comparing two Vendor files. I am not sure what you are looking at but it is beyond my understanding. Talking to RDworks is hard/impossible, talking to Lightburn is easy- Oz the creator is a member of this forum, altho he is pretty busy nowdays and does not check in so often- a great guy tho. Ask a question on his forum and you will get a response.

.

Notepad++ screenshot.jpg

[Marian Scheja]

Ahh you are talking about files generated by LightBurn
My file is generated by RDworksV8.01.54

RDw_vendor.png

I thought as this forum is called rdworkslab it is obvious we are talking about RDworks
I know Lightburn, but don't use it (yet)
I think i will contact Cloudray regarding the issues.
A ~500$ Controller with Buttons not working (jog y up in incremental mode), horrible translation should be worth getting fixed.
Lets see where this is going.

Thanks for your support.

[Gene Uselman]

Sorry for the confusion- this forum was formed when Lightburn was a twinkle in Oz's eye- I recall him talking about writing the program years ago [he is/was a member] and while it was a worthy project, I have enough computer/coding experience to have a small inkling of how tough it was going to be. He is a smart and dedicated fellow and I bow down to him... he nailed it.

Actually RDworks and Lightburn both will save the parameter file that will open in Notepad++. I forget if you have a 6445 controller- if so the button in the middle of the directional arrows toggles intermittent/steady movement- may not be what you are looking for but good to know. Gene