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View Full Version : Fine Horizontal Lines when Raster engraving, epilog laser



John Breznicky
10-10-2013, 11:40 PM
Hey Guys, first post on here, been reading for a while.

I have a 2 month old epilog helix 50watt 18"x24" laser. It's primary use is to engrave/cut acrylic and thin woods.

Everything has run quite smoothly since purchase, until today. When raster engraving, I'm getting very fine lines in areas that contain no artwork that should no be getting engraved. Artwork is rather simple and this problem has happened suddenly, I have been engraving steadily since purchase with no issues. Photos show what I'm trying to explain.

Artwork is vector artwork at 60%K
Raster speed is 50/ Power is 95

Troubleshooting I have tried (based on epilog service call):
Cleaning optics
Aligning laser
Re-installing epilog driver

Has anyone see this before? Any suggestions appreciated!

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Henri Sallinen
10-11-2013, 2:42 AM
The only problems I've faced with a Epilog laser (that affected the engraving) was because of a dirty encoder strip. But I'm not sure that cleaning it would resolve this kind of a issue. Hopefully your problem gets resolved. Good luck!

Rodne Gold
10-11-2013, 5:13 AM
There is a sort of "warm up" voltage applied to the laser (Trickle/Tickle) which can change over time , if its too much , you can see the ghost engraving where there should be none , ask Epilog if it may be this and how to set it lower.

Mike Null
10-11-2013, 8:20 AM
I had that occur when I was operating Epilogs several years back. In my situation the problem repeated itself on every job and at the same place every time. I believe Rodney is correct and you'll need to contact Epilog.

At one point I had to replace the mother board in one of the machines but I do not recall that this issue was related to that.

John Breznicky
10-11-2013, 9:13 AM
I had that occur when I was operating Epilogs several years back. In my situation the problem repeated itself on every job and at the same place every time. I believe Rodney is correct and you'll need to contact Epilog.

At one point I had to replace the mother board in one of the machines but I do not recall that this issue was related to that.

Thanks for the reply. Have been on the phone with them for the past 3 days and they've had me go through all types of trouble shooting measures. Their latest theory is that its a driver or file issue and not the hardware. I'm a bit skeptical as the files I'm using have not changed and I've re-installed the driver.

I guess today will be day 4 on the phone with epilog!

Chris DeGerolamo
10-11-2013, 9:30 AM
Are you pressing 'go' before the job is completely sent??

John Breznicky
10-11-2013, 10:27 AM
Are you pressing 'go' before the job is completely sent??

Nope, I've always waited until the job is completely sent, until green light is off. Like I said earlier, It's a pretty sudden and abrupt problem, no issues for 2 months.

Kev Williams
10-11-2013, 10:35 AM
Cable issue maybe?

My old Universal laser has done similar stunts, but my problem was always LPT cable related. I used to share the machine with 2 computers using a simple port switch, and whenever the line-thing happened I could always fix it by cleaning the switch, switching the port or whatever. I'm sure you're using a USB connection, but I've known USB cables and ports to go bad. It doesn't take much bad data to create engraving you don't need!

Try switching cables and USB ports and see if that helps, at least it's a cheap troubleshoot--

John Breznicky
10-11-2013, 10:47 AM
Cable issue maybe?

My old Universal laser has done similar stunts, but my problem was always LPT cable related. I used to share the machine with 2 computers using a simple port switch, and whenever the line-thing happened I could always fix it by cleaning the switch, switching the port or whatever. I'm sure you're using a USB connection, but I've known USB cables and ports to go bad. It doesn't take much bad data to create engraving you don't need!

Try switching cables and USB ports and see if that helps, at least it's a cheap troubleshoot--

Thanks for the tip Kev, I'll give it a shot. Currently printing with ethernet, using the crossover cable over our network, which Epilog verified is the preferred method. Worth a shot though.

Chuck Stone
10-11-2013, 12:21 PM
it looks like tickle voltage to me, too.
But I'm no laser technician.
Did you ask Epilog about 'tickle' specifically?

John Breznicky
10-11-2013, 4:11 PM
it looks like tickle voltage to me, too.
But I'm no laser technician.
Did you ask Epilog about 'tickle' specifically?

Latest from epilog, they are sending a replacement laser tube. 50 watts are backordered, but hopefully I'll be back in business soon!

Mike Null
10-12-2013, 8:31 AM
I also experienced Kev's example on my old ULS. Sometimes just reattaching the cable solved the problem.

Larry Bratton
10-12-2013, 12:37 PM
Hummmm,,another tube?? and 50 watt is BACKORDERED..I just went through a tube replacement last week of a 40 watt tube and they too were BACKORDERED .
They sent me a Coherent tube..wonder what's going on ?

Have you tried connecting your laser directly to your computer via Ethernet and use just a straight Ethernet cable? Crossover cable could be the issue or something in the network. You could try a USB connection also just to see. USB works OK (sometimes) but straight Ethernet connection is great.

John Breznicky
10-12-2013, 4:20 PM
Hummmm,,another tube?? and 50 watt is BACKORDERED..I just went through a tube replacement last week of a 40 watt tube and they too were BACKORDERED .
They sent me a Coherent tube..wonder what's going on ?

Have you tried connecting your laser directly to your computer via Ethernet and use just a straight Ethernet cable? Crossover cable could be the issue or something in the network. You could try a USB connection also just to see. USB works OK (sometimes) but straight Ethernet connection is great.

I have it connected via usb currently and am having the same issue. The odd thing of it all is that our files have been the same and the conditions/method have been consistent. It was a sudden issue, which lead me to believe it was a sudden mechanical failure. The fact that convinced epilog it wasn't a data or file issue was when they asked me to monitor the behavior when simply hitting "go" again and not re-transmitting the job from the computer. They felt that if it was a data transmission error that the lines that are showing up would be typical each time I re-sent the job by hitting "go". Which makes total sense to me, but unfortunately, that was not the case. The lines show up in a random and unpredictable way and are different from job to job.

It's frustrating that the tube is backordered but at least once it's back in stock it will ship overnight.

Chuck Stone
10-12-2013, 6:20 PM
the more you describe it, the more it sounds like the tickle voltage.
The tube is pre-ionized when the machine is on, but not quite
enough to power the beam. That threshold is the 'tickle' voltage, as
Rodney described it. Think of it as a standby voltage. It should be
juuuuuust high enough to be on the verge of firing the tube, but
not quite. If it is set too high, it might sometimes fire the beam when
it isn't supposed to. This sounds like what you describe.

It could be that you'd be back in business by turning a tiny screw.
(potentiometer) or a Config setting..

John Breznicky
10-12-2013, 7:00 PM
the more you describe it, the more it sounds like the tickle voltage.
The tube is pre-ionized when the machine is on, but not quite
enough to power the beam. That threshold is the 'tickle' voltage, as
Rodney described it. Think of it as a standby voltage. It should be
juuuuuust high enough to be on the verge of firing the tube, but
not quite. If it is set too high, it might sometimes fire the beam when
it isn't supposed to. This sounds like what you describe.

It could be that you'd be back in business by turning a tiny screw.
(potentiometer) or a Config setting..

I thought of this logic as well. The epilog has a TI and TM setting in the config settings for the tickle settings. I talked to epilog directly about this. My settings for both values were at 00 for both (Lowest voltage), which is what epliog suggested to try to resolve the issue. Increasing these values made the problem worse (increase in lines).

Chuck Stone
10-12-2013, 7:58 PM
But if tickle was the issue (not saying it is) then of course
raising those numbers WOULD make it worse. Because you
have described symptoms of the voltage being too high already.
Making the voltage higher would exacerbate the problem.

They must know best.. it's their machine. But if I wasn't getting service
till a back-ordered part came in, I'd be wondering if there was still a
potentiometer on the board somewhere. I've never trusted software
settings for voltage to be accurate on machines like this. It's more like
they change from State 1 to State 2 to State 3 etc.. instead of actually
changing to a specific voltage. I'd think that State 1, State 2 etc. would
have to be manually set by the tech at some point. (maybe the factory)

anyway.. hope you're running soon. I just got mine back, so I know how
that feels!

Hunter OFolan
02-19-2014, 1:06 PM
Hey, i've recently been dealing with a similar problem. The difference is that i see only between 1 and 4 lines on yours. my prints get the same straight low power lines that you have, however there are many of them. I've been in touch with epilog, and have done a lot of trouble shooting. Main ones were:

1. clean encoder strip
2. try doing this on different/ less used area of tray.
3. take the serial cable out carefully at both ends and put it back in the other way. (it connects to the encoder, sometimes a pin can break).
4. uninstall and reinstall print driver
5. reflash firmware on laser
6. it was also mentioned that the computer can develop glitches, you can intstall a print driver on a different computer and try that.
7. clean lense.
8. blow out encoder with can of compressed air.
9. adjust the tickle mode settings in config. menu, try to track any improvements.
10. adjust laser Match setting in config. menu, try to track improvements.

None of these did anything, the conclusion that we arrived at was that the laser tube itself was leaking energy, ie whatever RF modulation that is supposed to be shutting it off is not working. This was mentioned to be a very rare problem. So we're getting a new tube, and it will be installed by early next week. I'll let you know if this fixes the problem.

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Dan Hintz
02-19-2014, 5:08 PM
Hunter,

Whenever you see streaks (or even small extensions of lines) between two engraved objects, such as what you show, it is almost 100% a tickle issue. Now, whether or not you're able to adjust the tickle enough if the tube is going south to affect the engraving is another matter... that said, if you can't adjust the tickle enough to get rid of it, the tube is far enough gone that replacing it is warranted.

Chris J Anderson
02-19-2014, 7:03 PM
Not sure if its relevant, but I had a similar problem a few days ago, only with one file, which had been generated by ULS 1Touch software.
Hasnt done it since on any other files.

vic casware
02-19-2014, 9:14 PM
That looks exactly like the problem i had last year, and a replacement tube solved it! luckily i was 3 days before my warranty date :D

Hunter OFolan
02-26-2014, 2:31 PM
Update to the 'many fine lines' during rastering problem:

Our laser engraver/cutter was not rastering properly, etching out a multitude of fine horizontal dotted lines between any two rastering jobs. We recently replaced the laser tube, with no luck. The same problem appears, we exhausted testing of different config. settings with laser tickle settings and laser match settings, and have also tried using different computers with the laser. The fan noise is not causing any interference.
What we've moved towards now is a replacement of the controller board. This will happen over the weekend, and i'll post an update after the fact to say whether or not it has fixed our dilemma.

-Hunter

Kim Vellore
02-26-2014, 2:54 PM
I have had this problem once when I sent it a large file, so I broke up the file into smaller pieces and sent it multiple times, that will be a quick thing to try.

Kim
Epilog 45TT

Mark Sipes
02-26-2014, 3:46 PM
Have you sent the file to anyone else to see it the problem is not the art. Does it do the same thing (fine lines) when lasing a regular raster test file. have not seen/read any outcomes?

axs karaci
11-22-2016, 11:14 AM
hello
i recently changed my 50w tube and my psu (60w)
i am having trouble at engraving, laser makes thin marks on both sides of raster
this issue is on x swing, unilateral, also on y swing and 348015
i have checked mirrors, lans, belts, motors. it happens only if i exeed 60mm/s
i was told that is a tickle voltage problem ,but i do not now how to fix it
thank you348015348016348017

Kev Williams
11-22-2016, 11:29 AM
What machine? I don't believe glass Chinese lasers do 'tickle'. Looks mechanical to me, as in loose belt or loose set screw on a belt cog.. could be backlash settings need to be looked at especially consider the new parts.

axs karaci
11-22-2016, 1:30 PM
hello it`s a kh5030, chinese, white and blue, 50w spt laser tube, 60 w spt psu.
the problem started after changing tube and psu
cuting works fine
it is doing that both x and y , swing and unilateral for ex at 200mm/s and 15%
i would apreciate some advise about backlash

thank you