6445G firmware upgrade - WARNING

[Dave Vigness]

If you have a 6445G, do not upgrade past the .15 firmware if you have solenoid controller air assist.

If there is a .16 I can't say, but .17, .18, and .19 will rattle your solenoid like a bad machine gun. They attempted to put a laser on vs processing option into RDWorks... and it doesn't. I have been back and forth to Cloudray, and they to Ruida, with no results. My new controller from Cloudray came with .17, and I have fought air assist problems from day one.

I thought back to Matt and Russ not having a problem, and along with the .19 that Matt sent, he also sent a copy of the .15. After playing with various versions of firmware and RDWorks, downgrading the controller firmware to .15 solved the problem. It now goes on and off with the layer like it's supposed to, totally ignoring the 'laser on' signal from RDWorks regardless of the RDWorks version. Russ's old .38 all the way up to the new and then pulled .48.

The .48 got released by accident, the Ruida web site is back to .47. The .48 appears to have a camera feature similar to LightBurn. Will be interesting to see what happens to it. They are also supposed to have a multi file version of RDWorks in the pipeline as well. Would be nice to cut and paste between files.

[sebastien laforet]

not sure if i saw this here or on the lightburn forum, but it seems that there is a hidden parameter in the machine settings that control the use of the air assist.

in "new normal" mode, the air assist is on ONLY when the laser is on, but it seems that you can change it to revert to the "old normal" when the solenoid "on" depends on the layer.

in rdworks, you have to "read" the machine settings and hopefully find the parameter.

found it : https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/t/a ... 445g/15935

The issue of the Air Solenoid clicking on and off while the laser is firing can be resolved by adjusting the setting BLOW TYPE setting using RD Works.

There are 2 modes for Auto Air Assist Solenoid Valve:
1 Blowing while LASER ON - this solenoid will click on and off each time the laser fires.
2 Blowing while PROCESSING - this will click solenoid on and off for each mode set in the layers if Blowing Yes or No etc but now each time the laser fires. This is the preferred mode.

I have not been able to find the option to change the Blow Mode in Lightburn.

[Dave Vigness]

You are correct, But for me, that setting had no effect on the .17, .18, or .19 firmware.

I had to go down to .15 to get it to behave. Matt said he is up to .17 and isn't seeing a problem. I'm going to see if coming up from .15 will go back to the problem, or if it keeps behaving. If Matt is not having any problems with the same version mine shipped with but is having problems, I have a feeling something got lost in the shuffle somewhere. Will update as I find out more

[Dave Vigness]

Update:

The problem is definitely between the .15 and .18 firmware. I do not have access to a copy of the .16 or .17 so I can't be more specific. If you have one, I would love to isolate it further.

I run Russ' squareness template on the .15, and it recognizes the grouping of the dashed line down the middle as one process. Upgrade to the .18 and it doesn't care, fires the solenoid on and off with every dash.

NOTE: This is on the 6445G only, I have no way to test other models.

[Dave Vigness]

Well, I hate to admit it, but the problem was right in front of me the whole time... kinda.

I have set options all over in RDWorks, but the read / write buttons at the bottom of the user window were covered by the laser work window, and I never thought to scroll down. Those buttons are not in the other tabs. Once I did the read / write everything is happy.

Sorry for the false alarm guys.

[Seamus O'Donnell]

Curious to know why do you need to update the firmware in the first place if the board is working fine?

[Dave Vigness]

With the default programming in the .17 firmware, the air assist is set to go on and off with the beam, not the layer. At the time there was no software control to turn it on and off, so I had to hook the air assist to the status instead of the wind.

Somebody at Ruida forgot to put teh software side in, and I was erroneously told that the firmware upgrade by itself would solve the problem.

I had to downgrade to the .15 until the newer RDWorks software was released to let you chose air assist modes. Once that software was installed then everything was good with the .19 firmware.


On a side note, Ruida is coming along nicely with their camera feature. They are still working on the bugs, but I would say the .49 RDWorks version is about 75% of the way there.

[Gene Uselman]

So the bottom line is the firmware update is OK, right Dave?

Speaking of camera, I ran past this video of a guy doing amazing things with Lightburn software and camera. I have known about the camera for a long time but never really took it as a serious tool. It is. Just wonderful how wrong I am and how often as I get older.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqnGXgWQQFQ

[Dave Vigness]

Yes, the update is good.

The 'mis-match' happened when I got a new controller with the .17 firmware, but was still running with the old RDWorks.

In .15 firmware, the controller ignored the internal blow type command and turned the air assist on with the layer.

In the .17 firmware it followed the software commands, but it defaulted to laser on instead of process on. The result is that when the laser fired and shut off, so did the signal to the air assist. Imagine your air solenoid turning on and off with every engraving pass. The .18 version was the same.

Once we figured out that while I got the new controller from Cloudray with the .17 firmware, there was no mention of needing to upgrade my RDWorks as well. Top that off with no audio with the Ruida demo video that left out one VERY important thing.

On my small monitor, the lower part of the work window was covered by the top of the laser work window. When I went to the user tab to set the option, the read and write buttons were covered. I was changing the option, but it wasn't staying. Once I played the Ruida video at a slower speed I saw their quick click on the read / write and it all became clear. Moved my laser work box, something I didn't even know I could do, so the bottom of the work window was visible and I was all set. I am now running the .19 firmware and either the .48 or .49 versions of RDWorks.

The camera, they call it canvas, feature appeared in the beta of the .48, it was not at a good stage. The improvements made in the .49 are most of the way there. The camera calibration is still anybodies guess. A number of the menus still do not have English titles so they appear as a string of junk. If they ever put out any actual documentation it will be interesting.

I'm not an official guinea pig on the camera feature, we're working on a quirk in the Corel export macro and it's just a side benefit.

If you want to play with it, I loaded a copy on my Google temp page at the top. I was looking at LightBurn specifically for the camera feature, but I am going to hold off to see what Ruida does with theirs. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

If you want to see the print and cut from lightburn, you can check it out here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

[Gene Uselman]

The RD controller I am using only works with LightObject software [purchased from LO many years ago] so I am on .19- not really sure if the newer software is much different. And I am moving to LB, just developing a new material library. And I saw that 'passthru' vid, I am working on a printed [non-pvc] hand out to do the contour cut from printed registration marks... so little time.