Laser possibly losing X-Y position/settings in the middle of large engraving jobs?

[Phil Horne]

I am having a rather severe issue with my laser at the moment.

When I send large files to be engraved to the laser it starts off fine but after engraving for a little while the head will suddenly decide to head to the left side of the laser and then when it gets to the end of travel it tries to continue past that point) into the left side and then it jumps the belts and is no longer set for the same starting point.. I have to stop the job and press datum to get the head to reset its X/Y positional data... This is not an issue with me trying to push the laser to engrave to fast as it happens at the same point with a specific file whether Im engraving at 100mm or 600mm. It has done this on several different files that were large. When I reduce the size or complexity of the engraving this does now happen. I have been working with G.Weike on this but they haven't come back with anything yet and I have work to do!!!!

Like I mentioned it seems to be file size dependent... It seems that the laser is somehow resetting its X-Y data and thinks the head is in a different position than it actually is???


Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dan Hintz]

Sounds like they have a memory leak problem... not something you can fix, just a major bug in their software. You're not the first to complain of it. My immediate thought when I hear of sudden odd movements is improper grounding... but tying the size of the job into the results leads me down the leak road.

[George Brown]

You need a software plug to stop the leak.

Have you tried to send the job to a freshly started machine, before it has run any other jobs, does it still happen then?

Could be a hardware memory failure that only becomes apparent when the file is large enough.

Can you break the job into two separate sections (as a temporary work around)?

[Phil Horne]

How thick should the ground wire be??? I dont remember what guage Im using now so maybe it isnt properly grounded???

It works fine if I break the job up but the whole point in getting a larger machine was to not have to break up jobs like this.

[Richard Rumancik]

What kind of memory chips do these machines use? If you can get hold of some alternate meory I'd pull all the memory and test it with different memory. Do you have the maximum memory already installed?

[Mark Ross]

We used to see the happen very sporatically, so random to the point where we could not produce it on a regular basis. We have Epilog machines and basically it came down to a much too cheap, much to long USB cable that WAS DRAPED right across the air extraction motor (nice source of random noise).

For other reasons, we switched the two lasers over to being on our Network and when they became network printers using good quality network cables the problem went away.

[Phil Horne]

Its looking more and more like its the actual file size that is causing the problem.. Im not sure why it would engrave fine and then crap the bed at the same point every time but the Letro boards do not like large files.. I guess its time to start looking for a new DSP that can handle large files.

[Rodne Gold]

There s an upgraded leetro board available. 6515 to the 6525 or the 6535 to the 6565. Or you could try a RDLC320 control board (you need the lcd display too)
Both should be round $400.

[Phil Horne]

I was talking to the folks at Weike last night and they said that the upgrade from the 6515 to the 6535 is not worth it. I havent looked at the 6565 yet but have been thinking about the RDLC320 and the LightObject controller. We shall see.. I need to get something figured out and quick.. Otherwise work will start to get even more backed up...

[George Carlson]

Does the Leetro board have a memory test? I switched to the LightObject board, I know it has one.
Have you tried doing the job in multiple downloads. Turn off a few layers and run the job. Then turn off the layers that were done and turn on the other layers. This will cut the memory requirements quite a bit.
If it doesn't work after splitting up the job. It is probably a software issue.

[Alexa Ristow]

I do think that Rodney is on the right track. We upgraded from the Leetro 6515 to the 6535 5 months ago and have not had any related issues since then.. We were previously not able to go more than a month without one of the following:

Head flies off past the limiters at end of cut.
Head flies off at the same point during a large cut
Head flies off before cut has even started.

in all cases, larger files were more affected than small files but sometimes even the tiniest of cuts ( think 1 inch circle , 3 second cut) would corrupt.
I did all the earthing possible, earth straps , earth rods scraped paint etc. I also ensure that there were no ground loops by having common earth on all ancillary equipment. I also looked for bad solder joints and resoldered the probable components, coming from an electronics background. Replaced the USB cable, a very likely case of corruption.

Solution: out of desparation upgrade to 6535.
Result: 5 months of stability...

Regards,

Norman / Alexa

[Brian J Young]

I found this very old post and thought it looked close to the problem I have had for a very long time and not able to solve. Don't know if anyone else has ever had this issue. I've spoken to TriumphLaser but they haven't been any help either.


TriumphLaser 100W using Lasersoft v7.21.0


It starts engraving OK.
But at different points on different attempts the head will suddenly run off to the left, past the limiter, and smash into the side of the machine.
It just seems to loose it's x-axis position and has no idea where it is.
Does not happen on y-axis.
The limiter switch does work when I test it.


This happens on engraving but using the exact same data file this does not happen when I change the setting to cut and lower the temps and faster speeds. But this is not as neat as engraving.


I say it's random because it happens at different points in the file and sometimes it will even run through the whole file and engrave fine.


It's done it for a long time. Might be my imagination but I think it happens more frequently now.


What I have done is:
Found some loose power source wire connections and tightened them.
Made sure the machine grounded.
Reformatted the machine many times and redownloaded many files.
Recreated the file many times.
Reduced the file size a couple of times but the files are not huge. Under 1mb.

Thanks if anyone can shed any light on this problem.
Brian.

[Bill George]

You have a broken or part way broken wire going going to one of your stepper motors.

But what usually happens on something like this the Poster will respond back he/she has already checked that and so on it goes. I do not understand re-format the machine, thats a new one on me.

[Kev Williams]

I found this very old post and thought it looked close to the problem I have had for a very long time and not able to solve. Don't know if anyone else has ever had this issue. I've spoken to TriumphLaser but they haven't been any help either.

TriumphLaser 100W using Lasersoft v7.21.0


Thanks if anyone can shed any light on this problem.
Brian.

I have probably the same machine (1390) in 80 watts. I'm about 90% sure your problem is a broken wire in the drag chain that along the Y rail to the X stepper. The stepper motor wires are too short so they solder extensions to them to finish the run. The solder joints start bending in the chain when the laser head is about the halfway point between top and bottom (at least on my machine)-

this show about where in my chain the splices were--
chain3.jpg

Once I pulled the wires I found this-
DSC04997.jpg
--when that wire started moving 'uphill', all hell would break loose when the wires lost their connection. When it laid back down flat, it was *usually* fine, but like yours, it got worse...

And it's not just a Chinese problem, my top-tier Gravograph did the same exact thing, but it DID take 14 years to wear out this wire
9wire2.jpg


My Triumph is going on 6 years old, and this is the only 'weird' problem I've had. I DID just recently buy a replacement controller, but the reason was because the USB connection to it just up and died, it engraved perfectly up to that point...

[Brian J Young]

Thanks Bill and Kev.


The wiring harness was actually the first thing I went to. I made a completely new wiring harness a couple of years ago when I had a similar issue. And I did test this time with a guage and it seems ok even when I jiggle the wires.


But reconsidering I don't think it can be that problem this time because when I change to cutting mode it goes through the very same data file with no issues. I ran the file 30-40 times no issues. I would have thought the wire should affect that too.


David from Triumph Laser has since come back today and offered to take my control board back to be checked and fixed. Or I can buy a new one if I don't want to be without the machine. Hesitant at US480 when he doesn't seem sure it's the problem and maybe I still end up with the same problem but maybe I'll have to take that next step.


Kev - the Format is a menu item on the machine that just clears all the files from the machine. Just to make sure I don't have a corrupt file.


Thanks again, Brian.