Shane Kretsinger
04-07-2017, 11:22 AM
So... I have a 2 month old 50w Chinese Laser and have been doing the usual "getting to know you" projects and figuring out the way it works.
The machine seems to do a decent job and I dont have expectations that it will know how to sing AND dance... I just need it to sing.
Yesterday I hooked up the rotary engraver for the first time and did some engraving on a painted stainless steel cup.
The engraving was working fine and about 80% of the way thru project I heard a "snap" sound from the machine... Almost like the sound of an electrical arc or a breaker tripping.
Then the laser continued firing but the print head stopped moving.
The program kept progressing but the laser just kept hitting the same spot.
I tried to move the carriage with the bump keys and it would not move.
So after determining that the machine was not going to recover I paused the print and hit reset and then restarted the machine.
This cleared the problem but the project was ruined since I could not start where it left off due to the program progressing while the print head would not move.
Also restarting the machine moves the axis to zero and a restart simply wont hit the same points.
So...Project ruined...oh well.
As I said... rebooting the machine put everything right again.
SO I ran another job on the ruined cup to see if the problem repeated... The same issue happened at an earlier stage in the print this time so I dont think its an issue with the print file.
Then I loaded another engraving file and tried it again... Same problem after a few minutes of engraving.
So, Thinking that it might be an issue with the rotary device since this never happened before, I removed the rotary device and tried engraving a flat job since I had never had an issue like this before on flat jobs.
The same thing happened again after about a minute of print time this time on a flat job... So this seems to eliminate the problem being caused by the Y axis stepper motor or the rotary jig stepper motor.
I thought ( I may have fantasized) that I saw a flash of white light from in the vicinity of the Y axis limit switch so I put a metal object in front of it and it turns red and then goes out again when I remove the screw driver.
So... I have no idea what is causing the fail... I ordered new limit switches since I have seen on YouTube that they do fail eventually but haven't seen any failures described to be like mine. (The switches were 4 bucks each so why not have them on hand)
So... X axis problem? stepper driver problem?? limit switch issue?
If anyone has any ideas I would be thrilled. Otherwise, after I sort this out I will post what I determined the cause to be when I figure it out.
In the mean time the laser is not reliable and I will obviously not run projects that cost money when they get fouled up.
-=Shanek
The machine seems to do a decent job and I dont have expectations that it will know how to sing AND dance... I just need it to sing.
Yesterday I hooked up the rotary engraver for the first time and did some engraving on a painted stainless steel cup.
The engraving was working fine and about 80% of the way thru project I heard a "snap" sound from the machine... Almost like the sound of an electrical arc or a breaker tripping.
Then the laser continued firing but the print head stopped moving.
The program kept progressing but the laser just kept hitting the same spot.
I tried to move the carriage with the bump keys and it would not move.
So after determining that the machine was not going to recover I paused the print and hit reset and then restarted the machine.
This cleared the problem but the project was ruined since I could not start where it left off due to the program progressing while the print head would not move.
Also restarting the machine moves the axis to zero and a restart simply wont hit the same points.
So...Project ruined...oh well.
As I said... rebooting the machine put everything right again.
SO I ran another job on the ruined cup to see if the problem repeated... The same issue happened at an earlier stage in the print this time so I dont think its an issue with the print file.
Then I loaded another engraving file and tried it again... Same problem after a few minutes of engraving.
So, Thinking that it might be an issue with the rotary device since this never happened before, I removed the rotary device and tried engraving a flat job since I had never had an issue like this before on flat jobs.
The same thing happened again after about a minute of print time this time on a flat job... So this seems to eliminate the problem being caused by the Y axis stepper motor or the rotary jig stepper motor.
I thought ( I may have fantasized) that I saw a flash of white light from in the vicinity of the Y axis limit switch so I put a metal object in front of it and it turns red and then goes out again when I remove the screw driver.
So... I have no idea what is causing the fail... I ordered new limit switches since I have seen on YouTube that they do fail eventually but haven't seen any failures described to be like mine. (The switches were 4 bucks each so why not have them on hand)
So... X axis problem? stepper driver problem?? limit switch issue?
If anyone has any ideas I would be thrilled. Otherwise, after I sort this out I will post what I determined the cause to be when I figure it out.
In the mean time the laser is not reliable and I will obviously not run projects that cost money when they get fouled up.
-=Shanek