X Axis problem on Weike Laser: Suggestions?

[John Bion]

HI all,

I’m having a little problem on one of my lasers. The X axis makes small banging/knocking sounds and stops short of traveling the full distance it ought to. The Y axis seems fine. In the attached image, you will see one cut that was fine except that it did not quite cut through, so I re-downloaded the file at a slower setting; initially the cut was following the previous one fine but at some point it went haywire. This has been an intermittent problem. I have changed the belts and checked pulley bearings to no avail. Control Card? Power Supply? Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Bad day today, my other laser has just had the tube blow :(
Many thanks and kind regards, John
314421

[Bill George]

HI all,

I’m having a little problem on one of my lasers. The X axis makes small banging/knocking sounds and stops short of traveling the full distance it ought to. The Y axis seems fine. In the attached image, you will see one cut that was fine except that it did not quite cut through, so I re-downloaded the file at a slower setting; initially the cut was following the previous one fine but at some point it went haywire. This has been an intermittent problem. I have changed the belts and checked pulley bearings to no avail. Control Card? Power Supply? Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Bad day today, my other laser has just had the tube blow :(
Many thanks and kind regards, John
314421

Simple fix, more than likely you have loose connections somewhere. Get your tiny screwdriver out, power off and disconnected. Check ALL those screw connections on the power supply, control board and stepper drivers. I found at least 3 out of maybe 50 or so, very loose. Problem solved.
One other source of problems the Homing or limit switches... connections and adjustment.

[John Bion]

Hi George,
Thanks for your reply. The limit switches appear to be working fine. The loose wire idea was one of the first things I looked at due to the intermittent nature of the problem but unless I am missing one somewhere, I cannot find anything loose. I am grateful for all you suggestions/advice. Thanks.
Kind Regards, John

[Bill George]

Hi George,
Thanks for your reply. The limit switches appear to be working fine. The loose wire idea was one of the first things I looked at due to the intermittent nature of the problem but unless I am missing one somewhere, I cannot find anything loose. I am grateful for all you suggestions/advice. Thanks.
Kind Regards, John

My GWeike came with hot glue material strung all over those tiny screws on all the connection terminals. You removed all that and tightened all the screws underneath?

Otherwise I have no other suggestions other than keep changing parts.

PS My machine was doing exactly what you are describing.

[Kev Williams]

OK, I have 2 theories that may or may not be of any help--

First has to do with your X-rail. I have a problem with my Triumph that I can fix but haven't yet-- my X limit switch is mounted about 1" too far to the right on the rail. This means the laser head travels too far to the right- to the point that the bearing rails end before the head travel does! The right bearing rollers run out of rail if I go too far right- The fix is to re-mount the switch to the left. (there's plenty of table space)...

Second, I had the same exact thing you're describing happen on my Triumph a couple of times. Check out this grid test plate, you'll notice the "1.32"s are all shifted, among other things--

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/grid2.jpg

-- When this was happening, my stepper motors and the machine in general was making a hellacious racket, 'banging and knocking' is a good description...

It took awhile, but I figured out the reason-- It was because small elements of graphics were left OUTSIDE of the working area boundary of my Corel page.
In my case it was a few nearly invisible nodes beyond the left edge of the working area. (Thanks to my old Casmate, long story)... Anyway, I didn't know
they were there, and they were exported into the Lasersoft program along with the rest of the text and numbers. But Lasersoft knew they were there, and
sent their minus-zero coordinates to the machine to be engraved...

When the Y-axis passed into the horizontal plane of the nodes, the machine tried to engrave them- then tried to avoid them because they were beyond
its boundaries. Simply put, the stepper motors were fighting themselves because of the bad coordinates, and they thump and bang quite profusely when
doing so! As soon as the Y-axis passed the bad nodes, everything was fine until another one showed up, except for the engraving postion being out of whack...

I finally found the graphic pieces in the Lasersoft program, but they came from Corel. No matter WHERE they come from, it's that they're in the machine's
program that causes the problem...

You may have a similar issue going on- If you have some nodes or piece of a graphic above or below the plate boundary over to the right side, the X-axis
may be having fits trying to figure out what to do--

which is exactly what looks like what's happening in your pictures!

These 'leftovers' will be group-able in your lasers engraving program if they're there and their color is active. Just zoom WAY out and draw a huge box around
the working area. If the box extends beyond the plate edges, you've found your problem...

If not, I've done a lot of typing for probably nothing! ;)

[John Bion]

HI Kev,
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Sadly this is not the same as your case, but I did feel for you as I read your story. I have had a few drawings where an “invisible” node has remained outside of the cutting area and given me grief until I selected all and found it/deleted it.
Thanks for doing all that typing though :)
Kind Regards, John

[Scott Marquez]

Kev,
Thanks for your write up. I was fighting a problem last night and it turned out to be some tiny holes outside of the cut area caused when I moved an object that landed outside the cut area from a "mirror" operation. They must not have been grabbed in the "pick" window when I slid them onto the table. I'm constantly learning things about my machine and software.
Thanks, Scott

[Bert Kemp]

See Kev it wasn't all for nothing. I can't tell ya how many times I was having some sort of problem and found the answer in a post that didn't help the OP with his original problem. ;)


Kev,
Thanks for your write up. I was fighting a problem last night and it turned out to be some tiny holes outside of the cut area caused when I moved an object that landed outside the cut area from a "mirror" operation. They must not have been grabbed in the "pick" window when I slid them onto the table. I'm constantly learning things about my machine and software.
Thanks, Scott

[John Bion]

Hi all,
A quick update. The problem in my case ended up being the main control card (Leetro MPC6515). I only discovered this by swapping out mother-boards between my two machines having already eliminated all other potential problems. Apparently it is a very rare problem, but an expensive one all the same.
Thanks to Bill and Kev, your time taken in giving recommendations and suggestions is very much appreciated, and thanks too to Dave Sheldrake for help over the phone.
Kind Regards, John

[Dave Sheldrake]

No worries brother :)

Must admit I was surprised to find it was the mainboard....unusual for those to fail :(