Rubber Stamp Engraving

[Nubbly5]

Hi

We finally got our Strong Signstec 80w laser engraver working (with no real help from Strong's Wang either).

Next question is, does anyone out there use their machine for rubber stamp manufacture and could you give us some guidance on power, speed and settings to get a good quality stamp output.

After several attempts we can actually get our data downloaded but are having some issues with appropriate quality output. Yes, we have laserable rubber and have sort of figured out the grade engrave function (sort of) but our output is extremely rough and not suitable for sale.

Any help, gratefully received.

[Nubbly5]

Anyone???

[coase]

Hi, hope 80w laser engraver working well.
I am Coase, a sales engineer of laser in China, would love to talk with you about rubber engraving, I sold machines to Melbourne for Fabric cutting.

Do you have some design of rubber, what format it is, .Plt, .AI,?
By the way, the focus length. the line as small as you can, adjust the laser head to up and down.
Chinese laser is different with USA laser, two grade, one balck, one white, But it enough for Rubber engraving.

[Nubbly5]

We now have our Strong Signstech 80w laser in full commercial rubber stamp production.

Wouldn't have been able to do it without photograv and some serious stuffing about. All trial and error but we got there.

So now we do our typeset in Corel x5, export as a .bmp
Open in Photograv and get our settings right, save it as a .png or .tif (doesn't seem to matter which).
Import to LaserCut 5.3 invert colours, mirror and grade engrave.

A bit of stuffing around but actually doesn't take much time once we've done typesetting which we had to do for tradition stamp making anyways.

Engraves in approx 40-50mins depending on size of plate.

We do approx 1-2 A5 sheets 2x per week.

Lens cleaning needs to be done at least weekly.

FINALLY!

So if anyone wants to know more now they can find SOMETHING that might help.

[Vitruvius]

Hi Nubbly5,
I to have brought a laser engraver and cutter from :Wang! (model: Strong 1290 sp with MPC6535) at the end of sep 2011 and its now the end of Jan 2012. can you please help??? would be much appreciated if you can......I’m having trouble with communication between the computer and the laser machine Every time I try to download the file to cut, a pop up box always appears, saying “Communication is broken for time out”,” Please close and open the output window”
is it just me or are the manuals supplied just vague ???? Could you please share with me what you had to do to get your laser going?
regards
Vitruvius

[Exsecratio]

Set the scan gap to 0.1 and try from there Nubs

Scan gap is the difference (or step over) between each line of the engraving. You may find you need to go down to a smaller number 0.09/0.08 etc etc until you get the best results.

Grade engrave in lasercut actually tapers the *image* its so the . on the top of things like the letter *i* has sufficient support when used as a stamp

Scan gap all the way though , play with that and you will remove the issues with striations.

best wishes

Dave

[Exsecratio]

Vitruvius,

Check your USB cable hasn't come loose if no luck then

Reload the drivers / lasercut on your PC.

It's a simple comms timeout, ie: your PC doesn't know the laser is attached to it.

best wishes

Dave

[Nubbly5]

Hi Dave

We had so many problems at the beginning that in the end we purchased an new Leetro controller after some advice that our controller was probably the issue (we had given up on getting any really useful help from Wang!). When the new controller was sent out, we were also sent a new copy of LaserCut5.3 directly from Leetro (and not 5.1 badged as 5.3). On downloading this new version of the software, we had no problems at all and had our laser up and running in full production. We assumed that the copied copied copy of the re-badged LaserCut5.3 from Wang was probably not surprisingly the problem after all.

HOWEVER another issue came to light recently. We moved premise and our new leased unit has RCD safety trip out switches for the electrical circuits and when we plugged the laser in at the new unit it became obvious that there was a dead short in the wiring somewhere earthing out and causing the RCD to trip. Even with the power turned off at the machine AND the power point turned off, as soon as we plugged the Big Lemon (what we call our machine) into the socket, off went the RCD switch.

2 hours with a very good electrician found that on assembly our machine had been assembled with an active and a neutral wire wired in together causing a an earth out (sorry about my non-technical description) and apparently (according to our electrician) could have killed us had we touched the wrong thing whilst having the machine powered up. In our previous unit, there were no RCD's so the issue was not apparent until we moved. We fixed this and were up producing again last night.....

The only advice I can really give you is to try and source a non-corrupted non-copied copy of LaserCut 5.3, remove the current program and re-load. Windows XP is the better platform to run the program, although we have successfully run it from one of our systems that has Vista.

Get onto the Rabbit Laser website and go through their instructions on how to load LaserCut 5.3 as it is not really very evident as to which order you need to plug the dongle in, laser in etc.

Other than that for us it really has been somewhat of an effort to work out all the glitches and to be honest, relying on Wang was not much help at all.

To this end, for anyone considering Chinese laser machines, unless you are prepared to work through a lot of electronic/computer issues, buying one of these machines is not worth it. For us we spent about $7,000 on the machine, another $1,000 or so getting it up and running but realizing that this would probably take us some time. Purchased Sept running by Dec.

As an aside we just received an updated quote for a 50w machine $29,000. A few months and an amount of dicking around to get it fixed was worth it for us. If you are not very handy and not prepared for a real workout to get your laser on the go, then pay the extra (man! what and extra though...).

Good luck!

[Exsecratio]

Hiya Nubs,

Have a look in the draw menu of lasercut, you have an option "Half Bitmap", useful for loading in any old picture and turning it into an engraveable image

Free as well ....must admit I'm not a big fan of photograv, it's designed for use with epilogs etc and doesn't really work very well on Chinese lasers

I agree, Chinese machines are the way to go if you are prepared to do a bit of mucking about but that said I wouldn't import direct. I have a 1290 (as well as two big metal cutting industrials) and buying from the UK has given me instant support (even up to 9pm at night) from the supplier over here.

Even UK based suppliers vary in their support, thus far Chris Jacobs / Sam / Simon and the guys at HPC have been the only company that really stands out as knowing their stuff. The rest vary between acceptable to truely dire
They even do support / repairs for other companies machines!!

My personal rule is, when you find a good company to supply you, stick to them, good suppliers are like gold dust
I value my Chinese supplier friends but being 6,000 miles away, in a different time zone and speaking English as a second language can cause real issues if something goes wrong.

Guess I better do some work

best wishes

Dave

[Vitruvius]

hi everyone,

Thanks Dave I will check nothing has gone loose. about reloading the drivers is there a particular way this needs to be done other than the vague manuals and instructions from Wang?
Can anyone please help me?
I have a CD that was given with the Laser cutter however folders are in Chinese. I managed to find my way to the LTSetupUSB V2.4 folder with LTSetupUSBDrv app file for the driver install......proceeded with the directions for installing drivers from the manual..... not really sure if anything happened..... pop up box appears and says set up complete do I push exit or do I just wait for somekind of ding....! sound
Any ways I push exit open up laser cut pro and try to download data to laser and popup box saying broken for time out appears.....?
attatched are images from my comp of pop up boxes......

I have emailed and phoned Wang asking what this meant 1 to two weeks later wangs response was a vague vid tutorial with a zip folder containing a folder called driver 2.2 and inside 2 files called usbcam.sys and usbcam.Inf.
hmmmmm...? I emailed him back and asked what to do with zipped files and other questions that may be related to why things are not happening....1 to two weeks later Wangs response

Hi,
this problem is caused for the driver install.
firstly, the drive can not work on win Vista, please use Win xp.
yes, the driver rar file you need upzip it firstly then install the driver directly.
please change win xp system to try again.
regards!
wang

hmmm Directly where?????? Wang
anyways if there is anyone out there who can help me get my baby up and running please help
much appreciated
and regards
Vitruvius

[Exsecratio]

Hiya VV,

Do you have a hardlock / dongle supplied with the software? looks like a USB memory stick?

best wishes

Dave

[Vitruvius]

Hi Dave,
yes I do have hard lock / dongle supplied with the software? looks like a USB memory stick I understand this allows me run the laser cut pro 5.3 app. does it do anything else?
Kind Regards
Vitruvius