Lasercutter back up

[Charles Yarnold]

Hello all,

With the broken interlock removed, and the ground work done for when we have a replacement, and also new tubing meaning a large increase in the efficiency of cooling, the lasercutter is now back up.

The price has now been changed to £5 an hour to cover increased costs.

Please remember to log each usage, and report any problems with it.

Till the next problem with it,

Sol

[Tom Scott]

Fantastic. Thanks Sol - that's amazing work and I'm willing to bet it'll go mostly un-noticed :)

[Tim Storey]

I doubt it's a problem but I noticed that the cooling sytem is running constantly. The laser has not been used (today at least) and is currently switched off. I'm sure its not as issue but just in case.

t

[Nigel Worsley]

> I doubt it's a problem but I noticed that the cooling sytem is running constantly. The laser has not been
> used (today at least) and is currently switched off. I'm sure its not as issue but just in case.

As I understand it, the cooling system runs whenever the water temperature is above a certain point. This
behaviour probably just means that it is a hot day!

Nigle

[Tim Storey]

In fact Sol has just confirmed this ;)

[asc]

Hello all,

I am not too sure how big a problem this is and sorry for the delay,
but yesterday during my second to last job the cutter strayed off the
cutting bed on the x axis and knocked the outer chassis (I am not sure
how this is even possible). When it moved off it bumped the outer
edge a couple times and i hit the emergency stop button.

I had thought there was an artifact that was left in the job that
caused the laser to move that close to the edge, when it made the
bumping it made me jump pretty quick for the emergency stop button.

From the photo below you can see that it was even cutting as it moved
and hit the edge - so it has burned/marked the metal of the edge of
the laser cutter. I am pointing to it with the screw driver. The
damage is cosmetic but cant be rugged off.

http://t.co/Rir19Ca

I did a test run after the problem at it worked fine (same job but
downloaded again - there was no artifacts in job to cause laser to
stray where it had gone). But upon reflection the test was short and
did not test the maximum x and y coords.

Is this problem normal? Is it something I did (or didn't) do? Since
I was using it at the time I accept resposibility and will be willing
to help with labour and pay for the repairs if needed. Though I am
not sure how to discern or fix them - could someone with more
experience have a look please.

-asc

[Charles Yarnold]

Hi asc,

Firstly, don't panic, it has done this once before. (if you look along the same side as the new mark you should see the one from before)

(this was reported at the time, but just a quick recap of what happened to me)

I had the same error of it choosing to go off in one direction and keep going. At that time I too heard it smack the side and try to keep going. With care I tried to run the job again with out re-downloading with it trying to commit the same error again. Re-downloading it fixed the problem and it preformed the correct actions after that.

I haven't heard it do this to anyone else before now, at the time I put it down to a glitch when transferring, as a photo shoot was in progress at the time with quite a number of flash lights plugged into the same power phase.

Did you notice any tools or power surges while downloading your job to the cutter? I realise this is a bit of a stretch, but worth checking.

I will be in tomorrow to try and fix a minor error in engraving so will give it a once over as well.

Thanks for letting the list know!

Sol

[asc]

> Firstly, don't panic, it has done this once before. (if you look along the
> same side as the new mark you should see the one from before)

...

>
> I haven't heard it do this to anyone else before now, at the time I put it
> down to a glitch when transferring, as a photo shoot was in progress at the
> time with quite a number of flash lights plugged into the same power phase.
>
> Did you notice any tools or power surges while downloading your job to the
> cutter? I realise this is a bit of a stretch, but worth checking.
>
> I will be in tomorrow to try and fix a minor error in engraving so will give
> it a once over as well.

Phew, that is good news.

There was no power tools or anything happening that would make me
think that there was a spike, emf or magic caused it.

I knew to redownload as I have seen the laser cutter act a bit strange
in the distant past and that it was solved by deleting the jobs then
redownloading again. I've normally seen this when cutting perfect
circles and the output looks more like an oval.

Would this bumping have knocked things out of alignment at all?

To remind: As discussed yesterday it was not cutting roarsomely when
super duper far from the origin.

-asc

[Dave Ingram]

On 06/27/11 13:26, asc wrote:
> To remind: As discussed yesterday it was not cutting roarsomely when
> super duper far from the origin.

Speaking of such things, I've had an issue with the cutter doubling an
engraving design (not just apparent doubling due to beam focus, but
actually drawing some of the thinner lines twice). Does anyone know what
I'm doing wrong with it? I have a large number of wedding-related
engraving jobs to do in the near future, and I want to make sure that
they're perfect.

D

[Billy]

I helped Dean cut some plywood last night around 1am, and it ran fine.

[M]

I had fallen victim to the cutter flying off on it's own before as well, I wrote it into the log - it was the first time I used the cutter and thought I had broken it. I found some hackers to guide me with it and it turned out to be just a glitch, nothing to do with my file or whatever.

That was a few months ago.

Hypno