Problem burning pic

[Lori Molitor]

185703
Here is an example of the problem burning.
The first one looks pretty good. The second time I ran this it burns at an angle.
Any ideas.
Thanks
Lori
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/misc/pencil.png

[Ferry Griek]

Looks like the x-axis belt is slipping, or the stepper motor is loosing steps in one direction.

Did you hear a strange sound while running this job?

[Dee Gallo]

Lori, you NEED to call tech support! You have been having waaaay too many weird things happening.

:) dee

[Martin Boekers]

What laser do you have?

I have an Epilog and usually for me it means I need to clean an encoder strip and reader.

[Joseph Belangia]

Martin & Ferry(weren't they a comedy team back in the 60's?) are saying what I would say. I feel more inclined to believe it is an X-axis belt slipping. Encoder strip is not entirely out of the question, either. If you don't want to get into the dirty-dirty of it, ring up tech support. Good luck!

[Kevin Berkshire]

Not sure what type of engraver you have, but one thing to try is to draw a box 1" smaller then your table then 2" inside draw a another box. Engrave the two boxes on cardboard or anything cheap and see if it keeps the measures of one inch from the egde and 2" from the first box to the second box.
Adjusting the belts can be done by you. Make sure when you home your machine that is really at the home position. You should have a homing X -Y axis setup. It sounds like a belt slipping or a bad stepper motor.

[Lori Molitor]

Thanks everyone. I have called epilog have the issue fixed. The encoder strip was dirty. Still learning about routine maintenence. Again thanks to all.
This is a great group of people.
Lori

[Gary and Jessica Houghton]

I am glad that cleaning the encoder strip fixed the problem. We had a similar problem, but it was the ribbon cable (housed behind the encoder strip). Ours had a huge crack in it from predominately lasering on one side of the machine. We switched the cable around and had no more problems. Of course we ordered another cable and replaced the original so we wouldn't have that problem again.