Epilog EXT35 start up

[Pete Thomas(UK)]

Hi All,
I expect this has been asked before but the site search doesnt work? I have returned from 3 weeks holiday turned on the laser and the machie would not register home and a message xy disabled :x appears.
Tried again and the head flys right to the middle and then forward to the front of the table. xy message adain.
If I try to strat it up again the x beam moves to the back stops moves about 1/8 to 1/4 inch to the left and the message appears again. Tried cleaning everything, checked all connections,beam ribbon cable . No difference.
Anyone out ther had the same problem and can suggest a solution?

[Bill George]

Did you leave it plugged into power? I suspect either a lightning or power surge caused memory setup to be corrupted. I hope someone can help you get it reset or perhaps a call to the manufacturer?

[Kev Williams]

Assuming the limit switches are working, and you have no broken or otherwise disconnected stepper motor wiring, I'm thinking along the same lines Bill --

My LS900 has been running for the past 5 or 6 years with a corrupted controller... the machine works just fine as long as I send jobs to it from Corel- However, jobs sent from Gravostyle (which is it's 'native' software) that have ANY vector art within the job puts the controller into an error state whereas the laser will not follow a vector path; the machine just goes into a super-slow-motion mode where the head crawls to the right about 2mm per second, OR it will grow a mind of it's own and will do random acts of goofy low speed or radical high speed movements, sometimes with the laser firing. The funny thing is, the vectors don't even need to be sent to the machine, they only need to be on screen within the working area... Once the error state happens, then no vector engraving is possible, even from Corel. To fix it requires rebooting the computer, deleting the machine and its driver, then re-installing the machine and driver, rebooting again, and hoping it works ;)

How the controller got corrupted, was attempting to run laser jobs from Gravostyle 7, who's driver nor firmware is compatible with my machine's controller. (I normally use Gravo-5) But I didn't know that. The driver was telling the laser to do things it didn't know how to do- I think testing out the new driver's extremely high DPI settings did the damage...

The permanent fix is to have my controller repaired or replaced, which could cost several boat-bucks. Or, as I've chosen to do, just live with it. As long as I don't run the laser from Gravostyle, it works flawlessly...

Sorry for the novel, but with your machine slewing about randomly rather than homing as normal, your machine may be suffering from a similar controller issue. You might try doing a full un-install/re-install of the machine, driver and firmware and see if that helps..