OK Fiber geniuses--

[Kev Williams]

Opinions please---

My fiber just wrecked both an aluminum case and it's lid. I thought I caused the bad engraving on the case, I thought I must've bumped the table or something...

Nope, the fiber grew a mind of its own...

Short version, it ain't doin' it right! The yellow parts had a ton of powdercoating to get thru, like 8 passes worth. After about the 4th pass I stop the machine just as it started the 5th. The engraving begins at the "V" in VALVE. When I stopped it I noticed it engraved the V up and to the left slightly. This was the first of many. As I went forward, the V engraved in no less than 5 totally different places. The rest of 'valve dia' engraved on the very last pass, I shut it down when I noticed EVERY letter was out. Before that, it was only the V, yet it would finish the rest of the logo fine. ALL of the engraving after ONE shadow on the V always engraved correctly, except for that last pass. The logo has shadows because I ran it separate for a few passes to get thru the coating better. (the letters were pretty much down to metal.) The upper 'tail' is probably done in 3 different positions, the lower tail I watched the beam twice add the shadow but mostly followed the correct path after.

SO I pulled the mirror head and had a look, no dirt, dust or crud, mirrors moved freely, lens was very clean. I put the head back on, blew the dust out of the machine itself for good measure, and ran a test on the green lid (which was already a test part). I had it run 8 passes of the entire layout (2 hatches @ .055), which took a little over 12 minutes. When it was done, all the engraving was as it should be, perfect... I thought- hoped- maybe it was a fluke. So I set the quit meter for 3 more passes, and when I hit the foot pedal, I was immediately greeted with out of position engraving again. So I just stopped it...

So-- is this a mechanical, or electrical issue? Me, I'm leaning well into 'electrical'. The main reason being, it seems to me that if it was mechanical, which all boils down to the 2 mirrors, the problem would be likely be with ONE mirror... And if that was the case, then the engraving itself should look erratic, OR, the engraving should be offset in only one axis. But- it's offset in both axis's. And aside from the slanted "D", which I completely don't understand, the engraving is fine. Even the D, which is slanted in both tests, but worse on the green, still has sharp edges. I would think the edges would be raggely if one mirror was 'hanging' or whatever. Instead, for the most part, it looks like the mirrors did what the machine told them to do. And I'm no stranger to data errors ;)

Opinions? The machine's on warrantee, but that's not my worry... The bigger problems are, how long will it take the Triumph gang to decide what's wrong, and the subsequent wait for help, parts, whatever.. Biggest problem is I have about $3000 of work stacked up for the thing, and now I can't trust it to engrave in the same place twice. Maybe tweaking some of the laser-on/start/off/go-home settings might help?

-This is exactly why I have at least TWO of everything around here, if one breaks, I'm not dead in the water... I'm thinking a 20w second machine is in my near future...

IIRC, in the other thread with the beautiful knife engraving, didn't that start out with a similar 'shadow' issue?

Anyway, any help or suggetions will be much appreciated :)

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[Gary Hair]

My first thought was that the Z axis shifted but since it's pretty even over the entire part I don't think that's it. The edge of the D is the strangest part to me, why is is so misshapen when everything else is just offset? I guess the first thing I would do is reboot everything and start with a fresh drawing. Place some small rectangles around in the same area of your engraving and see if the problem persists. I'd also try changing speed - up and down - by a large amount to see if the problem gets worse or goes away. By large amount, I mean from whatever it is up to 3,000 or 4,000 and down to 20 or 30.

[Kev Williams]

I forgot to mention the case engraving, which was just 4 numbers about 2" apart both directions, and '24VDC INPUT', much less, and much smaller engraving... after several passes, I changed the freq from 40 to 60 and lowered the power (to lighten the engraving), and it all engraved in the wrong place, up and left like above. I thought I'd bumped the case or the table. One difference between the 2 issues, was the shadowing in the pics was near the extreme left of the 6" working area, the case engraving was near the far right. So the issue isn't just 'on the left'.

After the case issue, thinking I was to blame, I did another case (a green one), all 4 sides get engraved, and all the engraving was fine... or so I thought. When examining it closer when my customer showed up to check them out, 2 single numbers and a single "!" had a shadow. Was hard to see (didn't go brown!) and not so far out of range as the others...

I pulled the connector plug from the mirror head when checking it. I'm now about to change USB cables for fun, and reboot everything,

The only thing different from yesterday, was earlier today I leaned the machine over (it was off) almost onto its side, to tighten up the rubber feet on the bottom. I can't imagine THAT is the cause, unless a wire was loose or something and gravity finished the job...If a reboot doesn't help, I may have a looksee..

[Kev Williams]

unplugged everything, straightened up a bit, vacuumed around the machine & table, etc... Then I decided to figure out how to break in-- turns out the top comes off easy enough. If you loosen all the other screws on the end caps the sides will come out, but I didn't go there.

First thing I noticed was I have a Max Photonic laser, but I already knew that.

Second thing I noticed was, even after owning this thing what, 3 months? -it looked like a dust bomb went off inside. Shooting the air hose inside, the cloud about choked me. Still tying to figure out what all the tiny pieces of paper were. I put the blower hose on top and gently blew as much dust out as I could. Looks much better now.

Third thing I noticed was, there's like 3 or 4 feet of fiber cable coiled up. I can see how easy it is to make the 'hand held' versions.

Checked the plugs and all inside, everything looks fine. Then I noticed the fourth thing-- nobody in China bothered to tighten down the laser's snout! So I went ahead and did that. I suppose I could blame Triumph, but I'm pretty sure they didn't build the thing, they just order them from someone else. So it wasn't just the rubber feet that were loose! ;)

Doubt the loose snout had much to do with my issue, it just sits there and pretty much wouldn't move anyway. But it WON'T move now.

So I've been running test stuff on it for going on a hour now, and >knock on my head< no flubbups yet...

[Bill George]

Having owned a Chinese machine in the past and finding lots of loose connections, that was the first thing i was going to suggest.

I wonder how well Galvo fiber lasers handle temperature changes?

With any luck mine will be here either today or Friday.... slight delay in customs.

[Kev Williams]

Well, it flubbed up again. Just a little, but that's not good.

So I emailed Triumph last night, Yolanda responded back within minutes, wanting me to skype- I don't have a smart phone let alone skype ;)

I sent pics, which she gave to tech. They said they've never seen this problem. Seems no one has..? Figures I'd get the one..

So I offer to shoot some video of what it's doing.

So I put a piece of lasersteel on the machine and proceed to go thru the exact same motions that led to the flubs. So guess what? As is typical for cars, boats and I guess lasers, when you need it to flub up for the mechanic, it won't.

I ran over that piece for 2 hours last night, never wavered. So I reluctantly finished a job I started yesterday on a dozen $65 things -my customer didn't let me know a logo had words added since the last time and now I had to add them- and it ran flawlessly. This morning I ran 20 parts, 2 at a time, no problem. And for the past 1/2 hour I've been repeating the job in the pics, restarting, changing settings, restarting again, letting it run several passes thru then starting again..

works perfect...

I have another case lid here that needs that engraving. It's the green, and it's a one-off, and they have no more of that powdercoat to recoat it if the machine messes it up...

I'm going to continue the tests for another hour or so. And if all goes well, I'm going to run the lid.

Any bets on whether I'll end up wishing I hadn't? (Murphy lives here, and his law rules...)

[Gary Hair]

Any bets on whether I'll end up wishing I hadn't? (Murphy lives here, and his law rules...)

Tear off a sheet of aluminum foil and give it a quick coat of flat black paint and put in on top of the part. Run the job on that first and if it works, don't change/move anything and run it on the part. Might save a part.

[Bert Kemp]

Good Luck Kev

[Kev Williams]

I ran several more test passes on the test lid, never wavered. So I bit the bullet and ran the good part. It ran great, thankfully! But then, it should!

When doing my other small parts this morning, an interesting thing happened- I changed the hatch routine on that job, typed in some text as notes to myself, then saved the job..

Only it wouldn't save. Got an "out of memory" error. So I tried to save it under another name, same error. Turns out it DID save both jobs, but nothing saved but the filenames. Trying to open gave me a 'file open error' or whatever...

I know the machine comm's with the computer, but to what extent I'm not sure, other than neither the machine nor the program will work if they're not connected. Does the machine run data on the fly from the computer, or is the data dumped into the machine's memory and runs it from there? Don't the Trotec's and other new machines 'job control' work directly from the computer?

If EZcad runs run data from the computer, AND I had an 'out of memory' error pop up, maybe that would explain yesterday's festivities?

[Bill George]

Was this one of the fibers that come with their own computer with pre-installed EZCad? Otherwise do you think it could be a USB cable issue?

[Kev Williams]

Yes, a bonafide HASEE Chinese laptop, with a 16bit Win7 OS. Pretty funny, it has a bunch of saved internet bookmarks to full-on Chinese websites, no English. Anyway, it's okay as far as computers go I guess. I'm using separate everything as I simply cannot use a laptop's keyboard, it sits behind a separate monitor. Only thing I ever touch is the power button.

And I HATE USB cables. They may be the bomb compared to LPT and COM cables, but I've never had good luck with them. The GCC about 3 times a week won't connect unless I unplug and re-plug the cable. And I'm using an amplified cable, doesn't help. Same thing with my IS400, I've changed out the cable several times. The one now gives okay service, but about once a week it won't connect. And if it's not the cables, it's the ports themselves, either on the computer or on the device. 3 of my computers have some non-working USB ports. The old Sony F-707 I take all these pictures with, its USB connection hasn't worked for years, I have to put the stick into a reader.

So since my machine is connected to its laptop via a USB cable, it would not surprise me in the least that the cable, or the communication via the cable is the root of all my evil.. ;)

And FWIW, the machine has done 120 other separate parts runs since the lid, no problem >knock on my head<

[Bill George]

I hate to bring this up, but I am pretty sure the only virus I ever had came from a Chinese website this Spring. That is why I now have Nortons on All my computers. How do you get your Corel files to and from this computer? Do you have a good anti-virus program?

[Gary Hair]

Yes, a bonafide HASEE Chinese laptop, with a 16bit Win7 OS. Pretty funny, it has a bunch of saved internet bookmarks to full-on Chinese websites, no English. Anyway, it's okay as far as computers go I guess.

First thing I did when I got my 2nd fiber was remove the hard drive and install a new one, then installed MY copy of Windows and then loaded the fiber driver. The version of windows on the 1st fiber was bootlegged and who knows how much malware was installed on it... certainly didn't want that connected to my network! You might want to try the same thing - install a new drive and start fresh. I doubt it will cure the current problem but you never know.

[Kev Williams]

I'm running Panda antivirus, I love it. Used to run Avast, and loved it too, until it decided to over-analyze everything, including what System Restore was doing. And System Restore don't LIKE being analyzed. It eventually times out, followed by every other program you have running. Anyway, Panda works.

Pretty sure the Hasee is clean, the Win7 is good, and the websites I found were in the history folder, not bookmarks like I said. I was sent photos of the Triumph techs connecting up my laser to the same laptop. My order was a new thing for them because I bought the first 110 volt fiber from them. They even sent me a 110/220 converter to run the laptop. They should've just read the laptop's adapter, you can plug anything between 100 and 240 volts into it! ;)

My home network consists of 9 computers connected to 15 machines and 3 printers. Only 2 computers have newer Windows than XP, and on the Win8 I'm running an XP virtual machine. It works twice as fast as the 8 side. All my XP's are online, never had an issue.

Speaking of China and viruses, did you guys hear on the news that many an Android smart phone has an app installed that keeps track of all your texts, calls and browsing, and every 3 days uploads all that info to a server in China?

Yet another reason I don't need no smart phone. :)

[David Somers]

Kev,

This is an unlikely thought, but easy to test. When I have difficulties with USB cables it often has to do with either the length, or the weight of the cable pulling down on the female side of the connection.

Try using as short a cable as it practical. And use something to help hold the cable up so the weight of the cord is not pulling down on the connection into the laser. In my case I used a magnet that had a hook on it. I stuck it on the case above the connection and just used a string from that to the cable to take the weight.

Somehow I doubt that is it, but simple and worth a try.

Dave

[Kev Williams]

I'm using the cable that came with it, I think it's 3'. Interesting to think back; the night I cleaned out the machine and all, afterwards it still messed up...

The next day I decided to finish cleaning up the table, and I unplugged all the laptop plugs and moved it out of the way. I did this the night before- unplugged everything- and replugged. But when I put the laptop back on the table, I thought maybe I should swap the machine cable and the dongle, as the dongle was on the right (machine) side and the cable was on the left. Changing them would keep the dongle more out of harms way, and the machine cable wouldn't have to wrap clear around the laptop.

It hasn't messed up once since I swapped them.

the foam from a small foam paintbrush would be perfect to shim up the USB cord :) --FWIW, the LPT connectors on my 2 big XT machines, I have those propped up, as each one only has one working hold-down screw. Before propping those they'd work loose and lose connection.

I've had many machine 'acting stupid' issues over the years, and aside from a bad XYM board in our first C2000, the problem has ALWAYS been a bad cable, or a bad cable or plug connection (including IC chips), or a loose or broken wire.

So, IMO Dave, your advice is dead-on! :)

[Neville Stewart]

Did you ever figure out how all the dust/paper got inside?

[Kev Williams]

yes-- turns out it wasn't paper, it's flecks of styro from the crate packing :)
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--the dust was my doing. :D