The Table Motor on a Fusion 40 is Pretty Darn Strong!

[Brian Leavitt]

I made a big booboo... though I place partial blame on what I feel is a design flaw with the machine. :)

I was engraving some baseballs for a customer. Run one, swap it out, run the next one. Well... on one of the runs I accidentally tapped the joystick as I was pressing the "Start" button. What this did was switch to a different job in the machine - a job which was set to auto focus to .020". Soooo the table starts moving up and I just froze for a second like an idiot. I didn't hit the Emergency Stop button in time and that ball went right up into the lens carriage, damaging the bearings and bending the whole I-Beam (which itself is pretty beefy). I finally whacked the emergency stop, but the damage had been done. After I shut the machine off I tried to get the ball out but it was in there so tight I had to get a hammer and whack it out. I couldn't budge it by hand. Also - the table was thrown out of level when this happened.

Fortunately, Epilog sent me a new I-Beam assembly under warranty. I spent yesterday evening and all of this morning R&R'ing the I-Beam, leveling the table, aligning the beam, checking the scales, and finally resetting the offsets. I just ran the first test piece and everything's back to normal. What a pain, though!

So why do I place partial blame on the design of the machine? Well I'll tell ya - There is a "Crash Bar" attached to the lens. This prevents the table from raising if something hits it. Well this is all fine and dandy, but when the lens carriage is in the home position, the crash bar sits so close to the ruler that any odd shaped objects are going to completely miss the thing.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Glad you got it fixed, especially under warranty.

It's for this and other reasons I never use the autofocus option from the dashboard. I also typically keep the memory clear on our machine, only storing the job I'm using.

Edit: Because I didn't follow my aforementioned rule, I almost just engraved the same number on two pistol slides that are supposed to be unique...caught it in time though.

[Keith Winter]

Wow that's scary. I also avoid auto-focus for that same reason, always afraid something like this will happen. Awesome support that they replaced that under warranty for you!

[Chris J Anderson]

Yikes !!!
Don't you feel just great when that stuff happens :(

I NEVER use auto focus.

I no longer store jobs in the machine, as the memory gets corrupted for some reason, and erratic stuff happens after the particular job has been stored / used for a while.

[Mike Null]

I used auto focus about 20 years ago--not since.

[Brian Leavitt]

I never use the auto focus on the ULS machines. With the Epilog, though, I use it for metal and plastic only. Anything else and it takes just as much work to measure the thickness as it does to simply focus manually.

I am overjoyed that they did a warranty replacement on the I-Beam. Otherwise, it would have been a $1,200 repair...

[Kev Williams]

I love autofocus, but the plunger hangs down too far. I'm either engraving stuff with 'steps' or whatever, or using 1" thick steel bars as weights, and the plunger just creates interference.

However, I almost always use the autofocus when etching wine glasses. I've run into well over 1/8" diameter variance, so having it autofocus on each glass before it runs is a plus...