ULS Versalaser VL50 Skips when engraving

[Harry Radaza]

I have a Versalaser VL50watts and when engraving, the whole image skips to the left by 1". It constantly skips to the left by 1". And when it does, the whole image is skipped already.

When the skipping occurs, there is a crackling sound coming from the left side (probably the gears ?). The tension on the belt is still tight.

Kindly help!

[matt heinzel]

I am not sure if this is your issue, but this happend to us. Both our Versa and PLS had some big jumping issues. It turned out that it was our computer. The Versa is run from your computer and if there is a big enough slow down on the PC the communication between the two messes up. Look and see if you are running too much on your system or if something is hogging resources. This may not be your issue, but we did all the mechanical things that tech support told us to and it ended up being our computer.

[Harry Radaza]

ok i will try changing pc. Though the crackling sound near the gears lead me to think it could be a hardware problem

[matt heinzel]

Like I said, I'm not sure we have the same issues. Ours would make a large clunking noise before it skipped.

[Scott Shepherd]

Give ULS a call, their service department is open. No need to changing PC's out and troubleshooting yourself when the pro's are in the office. If you're in another country, use Skype if you need to.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Harry,

Roll the head back and forth by hand see how it feels, My guess is the air line for the air assist has popped out and is binding. You should feel this and possibly see it by moving the X axis head back and forth with the system off.

[Todd Schwartz]

Very timely post - don't want to hijack this thread, but I am experiencing exactly this issue of my air line popping out of the track and binding the laser carriage. Mike, do you have suggestions on how to fix this? My solution was to take off the cover on the arm, remove the grid and give the air hose a twist where it attaches to the carriage.

Harry - experiencing a similar issue on my VL300. During a raster operation the laser will pause, make a noise and then start engraving at a different spot. It has been recommended to me to try a different USB port, replace the USB hub, replace the USB cables. If you do a search on this forum you will find others that have this issue and other recommendations. So far I have not hit on one that works 100% of the time. Good luck and please share with us your results.

Thanks,

Todd

[Mike Mackenzie]

Todd,

If you do not use the air assist I would cut the hoses out, If you do use it then the best thing would be to replace the hoses.

[Paul Cavallaro]

I have been fighting with this same problem for over a year now. Once in a while my Versalaser VL-300 30 watt machine will do the same thing as your picture showed- the laser sems to jump to another place on the project and then continue as if nothing happened. I have ruined many projects like this.

Things I have tried to correct this are as follows:

1. Shut off all screensavers.
2. Set your hibernation or sleep settings to - NEVER.
3. Turn off all anti virus programs.
4. Hit "Control, Alt, Delete" keys to bring up the Windows Task Manager, click on the PROCESSES tab, find Versalaser on the list, right click and change the priority to HIGH.
5. Shut down any unused programs that may be running in the background.
6. On your laser, there are small allen head screws that hold the belt drive pulleys to the shafts, make sure these are tight. If these were to slip on the shafts, you would get an x-axis problem like you picture showed.

When it first happened , Universal sent me a new motherboard, a new USB board, and a new USB cable. I installed these, but it did not help.

They also stated that this could be a computer problem, or it may be a laser problem. But I can afford to run out and buy another computer to try right now.

Are you using a laptop? I am using Toshiba Pentium 4 laptop.
If you are, please note that the output of the USB ports on a laptop are very low in current. Get a powered USB hub from Staples (about $20), and plug your laser into that.

I am sorry this post is so long, but I wanted to explain that you are not alone with this problem. I hope that together, along with the great minds at Sawmill Creek, we can both fix our machines for good.


:)
Paul Cavallaro
American Laserworks, LLC

[Dave Coble]

Agreed. I have similar issues and found them to be all self-induced. It seems that the laser is only happy with an absolutely continuous stream of data. If that gets interrupted by any other tasking of the cpu....look out my friend - all kinds of interesting things can happen.

set up as previously recommended

sleep - never

hibernate - never

system standby - never

shut down everything when running a job except your tools for running the job itself

don't try to work on anything else while running the job either

also make sure that any system tool that might try to pick an inconvenient time to go look for an update online, etc is also disabled

[Andrey Anfimov]

USE ONLY SHORT HIGHT QUALITY USB CABLE.

When I made work on the big material the Versa Laser made terrible sounds and drawing have been made with distortions. Vertical lines have been strongly broken. I changed the driver, but it has not helped to solve a problem. Then I have replaced cable USB with shorter (90 cm) and the problem has disappeared. Also do not put cable USB near to sources of strong magnetic radiation. For example near a laptop power unit.

[Ramon Carrizosa]

Hey Paul. I get similar "grinding" noises and small skips on our Epilog Radius. I was not to clear if the powered USB Hub solved your issue?

thanks

[Harry Radaza]

UPDATE -

While trying to figure out on my own what was going on, we were able to isolate the problem to a certain extent. It would only skip on the left half of the table so we did all our jobs on the right half of the table (12" - 24") with no problems.

Spoke with ULS reps and we determined that my machine is 3 years old and is taking a heavy beating (60 - hours a week). They can't pinpoint what the problem is BUT can suggest that due to the heavy work load it is time anyways to replace the following :

- Gear head on the right side (might be cracked but I don't see any)
- idle pulley on the left side (where the noise when skipping comes from - no cracks seen either)
- belt (might have worn out teeth - possibly)
- 4 wheels in the lens carriage (might be worn out - can't determine)

After placing this order, we tried running jobs from left to right and notice that the air hose pops out when the carriage is all the way to the left just as mike had mentioned. And then I remembered that this was my very first problem with the machine during the first 6 months. I simply unscrewed and adjusted the angle of the hose back then. That seems to not work now. I use air assist so I can't do without the hose.

So I ordered the replacement hose too.

So now I've got a bunch of parts (although no regrets since I do need to replace them as ULS suggested although I don't know if you guys have gone more than 3 years without replacing the said parts?) but I haven't installed them yet.

I am in the middle of a big order and don't want to render the machine useless after trying to service it. I will make do with half the table for now. In the meantime, I will try turning off hybernate and sleep etc... as suggested. But it seems more and more like the air hose was at fault.

By the way, I have 3 LaserPro Mercury's (25 watts) that are working great. Though I still love the versa due to the speed (50 watts).