Gcc Laserpro Mercury rev 1 rebuild

[Klas Malman]

I have a 25W Mercury rev.1 with a fading Synrad 48-25w tube. Replenishing this seams to be quite costly. This and the fact I wanted higher power and a more up to date controller made me decide to replace most of the electronics in the unit, and go for a Chinese glass tube in the 70-80w range.

I have ordered a Ruida 6445 controller, and my first task will be to see if I can interface it to the Brushed DC motors handling the X and Y axis. Normally the Ruida’s expect steppers, but I was hoping to be able keep the DC motors.

I have got the specification of the motors and encoders from Hansen, and has ordered Leadshine DCS810 drivers, that i hope will be able to control the motors in a usable manner. The DCS810 is a dc servo driver with encoder feedback, its motion interface is step/dir to emulate a normal stepper driver.

Has anybody tried something like this?

Comments and tips are welcome.

[Klas Malman]

(Hmm had the idea to edit my previous post, but could not find how to...)

My main worry is: the DCS810 and the motors with their encoders becomes their own feedback systems, but the controller is outside of the feedback loop, and that the DCS might cause latency and possibly ringing in the movement in respect to the controller timing and laser beam control.
I'm not sure if this will be in such magnitude that it will affect positioning precision during cutting and engraving..

Maybe i should be looking at replacing the motors with steppers after all.....

[Frank Small]

Hello Klas

I am in the last stages of upgrading the laser tube and PSU on my China blue so called 50 Watt machine. My original tube failed a month out of warranty and so it sat for just about a year.

I went with a 75W Reci tube and 80W PSU from Cloudray. I had to make my own mounts to fit the space I had to work with and extend the cabinet to accommodate the longer tube. The tube has metal ends with screws to make the electrical connections and seems to be very well made.

In the process I upgraded to Russ's lightweight type C laser head along with numerous other things.

I have included a few pictures below.

Please let me know if I can be of any help.

[Klas Malman]

Thanks Frank, will do...

To answer my own question about delays and so on, when using the closed loop servo controller. Reading up a bit on hybrid servos/steppers i realised that thats the exact same thing as they do when using those setups. So hopefully my dcs setup will work.

Have not decided which tube to go for, but will probably buy from cloudray as they seams to be a known reliable seller.
And then we have the psu selection.... cloudray sells a bunch of different psu’s in various power ranges... is one or another series preferred before the other.... i cant tell any difference from the various products in the same power levels.
I believe Russ have a MYJG in at least one of his machines...

Any thoughts?

[Jeff Lawrence]

Klas Malman

I just picked up a Mercury (1) with the intent of just using the mechanics with another laser. Did you end up converting yours? I see Gecko makes a 320X driver made for this sort of thing so trying to track down someone who has converted a mercury