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Joe De Medeiros
05-25-2010, 11:26 AM
Hi guy's, this past weekend while working on a job, the mirror assembly began hitting the left side of the carrage, this happen right after I focused and reset. I turned off the machine and now it seems normal. It was like the machine lost track of where the home position was. I ran the machine for a few hours after and focused and reset a few times, but the problem never happened again. Should I be worried about this ?

The machine is a 1 week old Zing 24 with at least 20 hours on it.

Scott Shepherd
05-25-2010, 11:40 AM
Joe, I don't know if it's a problem or not, but I'd call Epilog for a couple of reasons. First, they can tell you immediately if it's a known issue, and second, you should have that call logged so that if it does become an issue later on, then you will have a record of it happening from 1 week into the purchase of the machine.

Just my opinion.

Dan Hintz
05-25-2010, 12:00 PM
If it wasn't such a new machine, I would suspect a dirty encoder strip first. What kind of materials have you been cutting, and do you have a good vacuum system?

Assuming the system is clean, I might suspect a driver bug or possibly a failing motor and/or motor controller/motherboard.

Joe De Medeiros
05-25-2010, 2:23 PM
If it wasn't such a new machine, I would suspect a dirty encoder strip first. What kind of materials have you been cutting, and do you have a good vacuum system?

Assuming the system is clean, I might suspect a driver bug or possibly a failing motor and/or motor controller/motherboard.

I've been engraving wood, acrylic, and experimenting with leather, the ventilation system is a 750cfm dust collector system vented to outside, it's the one my vendor recommended. There is no encoding strip, it's a stepper based system, unless they are using encoder wheels on the steppers. I ran a full speed test yesterday full engraving area 12x24 and focused before the test, with no problems. One other thing I noticed when the problem occurred is that it engraved outside of the engraving area on the left side ruler, so it seems like it was a homing issue

Dan Hintz
05-25-2010, 2:56 PM
It may be missing steps (bad hardware driver), getting hung up somewhere (and it can't tell because it's not closed-loop), or the home switch is flaky.

Joe De Medeiros
06-29-2010, 12:06 PM
Well, it turns out it was user error, I was not reseting it back to home position properly after moving the carriage by hand. The Tech Rep at Epilog was extremely helpful, and walked me through all the proper steps.

Gary and Jessica Houghton
06-29-2010, 12:11 PM
Joe, if this happens again, you might look at the ribbon cable attached to the encoder strip. We were having a similar issue and turns out that was the problem. Glad everything got worked out.

Zachary Buckholz
07-03-2010, 10:56 AM
I had this same problem a lot when I first got the Zing, and every now and then when I am distracted.

It's me....

Here's whats happening:
When you set your page size to something like 10x10 (any number can work in this example), and you 'accidently' reset your home position to something that is to close to the edge this causes the problem.

Your actually sending instructions to the laser to attempt to move past the edge of the work area and it's just following your instructions.

I personally think Zing should fix this, but not allowing people to make this mistake. But the cause is user error.

Bob Davis
07-03-2010, 12:20 PM
Wouldn't it just be easier and simpler to set the page size to the bed of the laser?

Frank Corker
07-05-2010, 6:38 AM
I'm with Bob. I experienced similar issues about the page setting and it was caused by using the saved files in the Epilog driver. They were all geared up for the mini bed sizes or less and as soon as I changed the page size to my laser bed size, worked right as rain. Now every file I save, all have the 18x24 and I have had no further issues.