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Allan Wright
09-09-2007, 1:16 AM
Anyone have this happen to them? I didn't see this until it went out to a customer. This file has cut over 100 times and I've never seen one mis-cut. I checked the file and some stock I had on hand - all cut fine. Do lasers sometimes 'glitch'?

The circled area should look just like the cut-out below it.

Leigh Costello
09-09-2007, 2:04 AM
Allan,
I'm no expert, but are your bearing paths clean and free of crud? That is what I would check first. Beyond that, I have no idea. Good luck figuring this out.
Leigh

Scott Shepherd
09-09-2007, 9:14 AM
Have you cleaned your encoder strip lately? Just a thought, might not be the issue, but I know a dirty encoder can cause some odd issues.

Bill Cunningham
09-09-2007, 10:04 PM
There could have been a little spike in the line.. Every so often, I unplug everything, then plug it back in again. The T1 connectors in particular if you use them, sometimes a little corrosion shows up, and you get random bits, or flipped bits on the way to the laser..If you could hear it, it would be 'static'

Allan Wright
09-10-2007, 10:43 AM
Bearing tracks are clean, I clean them often.

I'm not sure I know how to clean my 'encoder strip' or T1 line, whatever that is.

I'll go re-check the manual's cleaning instructions. I THOUGHT I was doing everything, but these 2 terms are foreign to me so maybe I'm missing something.

Scott Shepherd
09-10-2007, 11:03 AM
Allen, I didn't have your model Epilog so I can't tell you exactly how to do it on your model, but basically, under the cover on the i-beam (which is the long bar that runs left to right that the lens assembly slides back and forth on, there is a strip of clear plastic that has very fine graduated lines on it. It's a long piece, as long as your i-beam. On the head that moves, there's a reader that reads those lines. That's how it knows when to fire.

You simply take a cotton swab and put some windex on it (Epilog's recommendation), and wipe it clean on both sides, very gently.

Any debris on it will cause a faulty reading, which will make it do weird things. In troubleshooting with them on several ocassions, they repeatedly had me clean it, so I'm guessing it should be cleaned every so often.

Contact Epilog, they can walk you through it for your model. It's easy and no big deal.

Allan Wright
09-10-2007, 4:13 PM
Fantastic, thanks Scott. I'll have them walk me through my first cleaning.

Brian Robison
09-10-2007, 4:27 PM
Did you use your air assist? Sometimes a drop of water will fall out of the tube and land on the material to get cut or rastered and cause a problem.

Allan Wright
09-11-2007, 10:25 AM
I did use the air assist. I haven't seen any 'drops' of water come through it, I use an airbrush pump as my source. Should I put a moisture trap on it?

I don't think this is the problem in this particular case, since the error seems pretty 'digital' and a water droplet I think would be a bit more 'analog' of a glitch.

Kim Vellore
09-11-2007, 7:41 PM
Alan,
It is most likely the encoder problem. Looking at the circled area you can see the X axis has slowed down and moved out of sync with your graphic. It has also not reached its final location which is the end of the horizontal cut. If there was some fine dust on the encoder strip the encoder would have read more pulses than it should have messing up your cut as it is shown circled.

Kim

Roy Brewer
09-11-2007, 11:50 PM
Fantastic, thanks Scott. I'll have them walk me through my first cleaning.Allen,
I can hardly add to Scott's advice. While tech support will be glad to walk you through it, it'll take you longer to get through to them than it would to just do it. As soon as you loosen the screws holding the X-beam cover you'll see the ecoder strip (upright, clear plastic strip) to which Scott referred.

Allan Wright
09-19-2007, 10:46 AM
You were right. I loosened 5 screws, removed the 6th and the cover popped off. One swipe down the encoder strip with a Q-tip soaked in the Epilog lens-cleaning solution and I had the cover back on. The strip seemed very clean, but the Q-tip did have some gray color to it indicating that it picked up some smoke off the strip. Maybe just the act of removing the cover dislodged the offending contaminant.

Thanks for the help guys - Creek to the rescue again.


Allen,
I can hardly add to Scott's advice. While tech support will be glad to walk you through it, it'll take you longer to get through to them than it would to just do it. As soon as you loosen the screws holding the X-beam cover you'll see the ecoder strip (upright, clear plastic strip) to which Scott referred.