Glen Peters
08-09-2004, 6:23 PM
My machine is a Pinnacle M-Series 25 watt
The other day I noticed that the laser was cutting about an eight of an inch lower than where I had placed the object in Corel. I went thru the steps to reset the home position. To test it I sent a 1 inch square to be vector cut in a piece of printer paper to the laser, carefully placed the paper on the vector cutting table and pressed auto focus. The table started moving up, the probe contacted the paper, table continued moving up, probe punched hole in paper, table still coming up, lens carrier hits paper, table still moving up and finally everything ground to a halt. After a bit I got everything separated so I could assess the damage. Nothing appeared to be loose, the lens carrier and rail moved freely and the only physical damage was a large crater in the vector cutting table.
Figured the auto focus probe was dirty so I cleaned and polished so it was shining like gold and moved very freely. Made a mental note to clean often and thoroughly. To test it I ran the table down as far as it would go, kept one finger on the power switch, pressed auto focus and then pushed the auto focus probe in. Worked as advertised. Did this several more times and it worked every time.
Sent my vector cut back to the laser to test my home position setup. Positioned a new sheet of printer paper on the table and hit auto focus. Up comes the table, up, up up,.... A mad dive for the power switch and just as I flipped it off there was a loud pop. Result- another crater in the vector cutting table plus this time the rollers holding the lens carrier rail popped out of the left side rail.
Being an experienced shade tree mechanic I loosened the three screws holding the side rail to the frame allowing the rail to move enough for the rollers to slip in place and then tightened everything. Ops normal, so I thought, except for auto focus and I can live without that.
Using the manual focus method I tried some raster engraving and vector cutting on small pieces in the upper left corner of the table. Everything worked OK so I thought I was home free.
A customer wanted another set of magnetic vehicle door signs for his second truck. Prepared the blank, sent the file to the laser, manually focused and hit start. Noticed that it was engraving at about half the power it should be so figured that I screwed up again and put in the wrong speed/power numbers. Thought I'd do a second pass and correct my mistake on the next blank. After engraving down about 2 inches on a 12 x 24 blank it started engraving at the correct power settings. Did this for about 4 inches and then back to half power for the rest of the sign. WEIRD!
Finally called tech support (after much flack from my better half who has no sense of humor about these things or appreciates a good challenge). After checking a lot of cable connection concluded that the ribbon cable connecting the auto focus probe to the main board had a broken wire in it. Auto focus would work when the lens carrier was in the right half of the work table (that's where I did all of my testing using my finger to depress the probe) but not when in the left half. When in the right half of the table the ribbon cable coming from the lens carrier was straight allowing the broken end to touch and complete the circuit. In the left half the cable is bent in an arc causing the broken ends to separate opening the circuit.
The squirrelly engraving was caused by the laser beam being out of alignment. Because I loosened the left rail to get the rollers back in place, the left and right rail were no longer parallel. It doesn't take much to get it off. Tech support talked me thru adjusting the rail and the aligning the laser beam so it strikes the center of the lens. Not hard to do but helps if there two people doing it. One special tool was required and that was an offset ratcheting straight slot screwdriver (4 in long with a 1/4 in blade). Have to get into some really tight places.
Now that everything is working normally again, I noticed that all the power and speed settings used on various materials are a bit high. Makes me think that the laser beam was out of alignment when I received the machine.
Lessons I learned:
1. Don't trust any function that has "auto" in its name.
2. Do not loosen any parts of the motion system before checking with some who know what they are doing.
3. Check the manufacturers website for updates to the manual. In my case there is 10 times more info available online than I received with the machine.
Was wondering if other Laser manufacturers do a beam alignment during the onsite setup for a new machine?
How often should a beam alignment be done? Or checked?
The tiny amount that I had to turn the alignment screws seems to indicate that just normal wear or just a little dirt on the rails and rollers of the motion system would put the beam off big time!
Glen
The other day I noticed that the laser was cutting about an eight of an inch lower than where I had placed the object in Corel. I went thru the steps to reset the home position. To test it I sent a 1 inch square to be vector cut in a piece of printer paper to the laser, carefully placed the paper on the vector cutting table and pressed auto focus. The table started moving up, the probe contacted the paper, table continued moving up, probe punched hole in paper, table still coming up, lens carrier hits paper, table still moving up and finally everything ground to a halt. After a bit I got everything separated so I could assess the damage. Nothing appeared to be loose, the lens carrier and rail moved freely and the only physical damage was a large crater in the vector cutting table.
Figured the auto focus probe was dirty so I cleaned and polished so it was shining like gold and moved very freely. Made a mental note to clean often and thoroughly. To test it I ran the table down as far as it would go, kept one finger on the power switch, pressed auto focus and then pushed the auto focus probe in. Worked as advertised. Did this several more times and it worked every time.
Sent my vector cut back to the laser to test my home position setup. Positioned a new sheet of printer paper on the table and hit auto focus. Up comes the table, up, up up,.... A mad dive for the power switch and just as I flipped it off there was a loud pop. Result- another crater in the vector cutting table plus this time the rollers holding the lens carrier rail popped out of the left side rail.
Being an experienced shade tree mechanic I loosened the three screws holding the side rail to the frame allowing the rail to move enough for the rollers to slip in place and then tightened everything. Ops normal, so I thought, except for auto focus and I can live without that.
Using the manual focus method I tried some raster engraving and vector cutting on small pieces in the upper left corner of the table. Everything worked OK so I thought I was home free.
A customer wanted another set of magnetic vehicle door signs for his second truck. Prepared the blank, sent the file to the laser, manually focused and hit start. Noticed that it was engraving at about half the power it should be so figured that I screwed up again and put in the wrong speed/power numbers. Thought I'd do a second pass and correct my mistake on the next blank. After engraving down about 2 inches on a 12 x 24 blank it started engraving at the correct power settings. Did this for about 4 inches and then back to half power for the rest of the sign. WEIRD!
Finally called tech support (after much flack from my better half who has no sense of humor about these things or appreciates a good challenge). After checking a lot of cable connection concluded that the ribbon cable connecting the auto focus probe to the main board had a broken wire in it. Auto focus would work when the lens carrier was in the right half of the work table (that's where I did all of my testing using my finger to depress the probe) but not when in the left half. When in the right half of the table the ribbon cable coming from the lens carrier was straight allowing the broken end to touch and complete the circuit. In the left half the cable is bent in an arc causing the broken ends to separate opening the circuit.
The squirrelly engraving was caused by the laser beam being out of alignment. Because I loosened the left rail to get the rollers back in place, the left and right rail were no longer parallel. It doesn't take much to get it off. Tech support talked me thru adjusting the rail and the aligning the laser beam so it strikes the center of the lens. Not hard to do but helps if there two people doing it. One special tool was required and that was an offset ratcheting straight slot screwdriver (4 in long with a 1/4 in blade). Have to get into some really tight places.
Now that everything is working normally again, I noticed that all the power and speed settings used on various materials are a bit high. Makes me think that the laser beam was out of alignment when I received the machine.
Lessons I learned:
1. Don't trust any function that has "auto" in its name.
2. Do not loosen any parts of the motion system before checking with some who know what they are doing.
3. Check the manufacturers website for updates to the manual. In my case there is 10 times more info available online than I received with the machine.
Was wondering if other Laser manufacturers do a beam alignment during the onsite setup for a new machine?
How often should a beam alignment be done? Or checked?
The tiny amount that I had to turn the alignment screws seems to indicate that just normal wear or just a little dirt on the rails and rollers of the motion system would put the beam off big time!
Glen