Christian Schink
04-27-2017, 3:59 PM
Hi guys,
I have not been here for quite some time, but am now meddling a little bit more with my GCC Spirit. I did experience bad engraving quality in two segments of the X axis caused by a badly worn guide rail (lines were not parallel in there places but slightly "wobbly", but fine in all other areas). I have purchased a new X axis guide rail and installed it in my laser. If I remember correctly then quite a handful of engraving jobs ran just fine, but then strange things started happening.
Here is the prograssion of problems that I am trying to work out:
The positioning on the X-axis was not consistent, so parts of the engraving shifted to the left or right evry slightly, making straght vertical lines slightly wobbly. This was not caused by too loose belts or loose optics, I checked that more than a couple of times. It got pretty bad after a time, with erratic shifting of the line starts from left to right.
359184
As I thought I had eliminated backlash and loose optics I interchanged X and Y motor, as they apparently are the same type. Everthing looked fine at first, but when looking more closely something was strange: Horizontal lines (as in the "Turbolift" text) now were not as thick as they were supposed to be. When decresing output resolution I found out why: It looks like there is a posisioning problem in the Y axis now, as the Y axis seems to move two lines at once, then one back, but not always exactly, so that one ends up with overlapping lines that remove too much of the material. X/Y seemed to be okay now. Hence my diagnosis: X motor malfunction (which I moved to the Y axis and the problems moved with the motor).
I cleaned the encoder wheel without much success and ordered a new motor from a local distributor.
After placing the old Y motor back to the Y axis and putting the new X motor in the X axis: No success. Still having the weird problem with the Y axis. This is what it looks like (lower engraving resolution):
359185
I have, again, checked belt tension and optics. I am out of ideas. And no, I have not turned on the "True Image" option by accident, which seems to do something similar (lasering every fifth or so line, then every fourth, then every third, etc).
If any of you guys has an idea input would be very much appreciated. I think I know what I am doing, as I service Epilog machines almost on a daily basis. When nothing works I will try to take the whole X/Y axis system apart and put it back together again, in a "have you tried turning it off and on again"-fashion...
Thanks in advance,
Christian
I have not been here for quite some time, but am now meddling a little bit more with my GCC Spirit. I did experience bad engraving quality in two segments of the X axis caused by a badly worn guide rail (lines were not parallel in there places but slightly "wobbly", but fine in all other areas). I have purchased a new X axis guide rail and installed it in my laser. If I remember correctly then quite a handful of engraving jobs ran just fine, but then strange things started happening.
Here is the prograssion of problems that I am trying to work out:
The positioning on the X-axis was not consistent, so parts of the engraving shifted to the left or right evry slightly, making straght vertical lines slightly wobbly. This was not caused by too loose belts or loose optics, I checked that more than a couple of times. It got pretty bad after a time, with erratic shifting of the line starts from left to right.
359184
As I thought I had eliminated backlash and loose optics I interchanged X and Y motor, as they apparently are the same type. Everthing looked fine at first, but when looking more closely something was strange: Horizontal lines (as in the "Turbolift" text) now were not as thick as they were supposed to be. When decresing output resolution I found out why: It looks like there is a posisioning problem in the Y axis now, as the Y axis seems to move two lines at once, then one back, but not always exactly, so that one ends up with overlapping lines that remove too much of the material. X/Y seemed to be okay now. Hence my diagnosis: X motor malfunction (which I moved to the Y axis and the problems moved with the motor).
I cleaned the encoder wheel without much success and ordered a new motor from a local distributor.
After placing the old Y motor back to the Y axis and putting the new X motor in the X axis: No success. Still having the weird problem with the Y axis. This is what it looks like (lower engraving resolution):
359185
I have, again, checked belt tension and optics. I am out of ideas. And no, I have not turned on the "True Image" option by accident, which seems to do something similar (lasering every fifth or so line, then every fourth, then every third, etc).
If any of you guys has an idea input would be very much appreciated. I think I know what I am doing, as I service Epilog machines almost on a daily basis. When nothing works I will try to take the whole X/Y axis system apart and put it back together again, in a "have you tried turning it off and on again"-fashion...
Thanks in advance,
Christian