I have an air cooled Hao-tian 60w co2 galvo. About 3 months old. I dialed everything in Lightburn when I got it for 3 different lenses. Have run hundreds of items to date without issue. Today I go to engrave something and the Y axis has shrunk in terms of correct size. Ran a test square at 150mm x 150mm. The Y axis measured out to 139mm, X axis was correct at 150mm. Tried a smaller lens and had the same type of error, just less, 146mm on Y and 150 on X.
Anyone have any ideas on what would cause this. There were no changes made to Device settings in Lightburn, actually reloaded the saved lbdev file as a new device for one lens and same issue. My suspicion is there may be a mechanical issue in the galvo head? Perhaps the mirror has slipped or something on that axis? Had no problems a week ago, machine hasn’t been moved or anything, climate controlled shop.
So this gets even more disturbing… I recalibrated one lens to output correct size again. Turned the machine off for a couple hours, thought I’d give it another go and find that the Y has shrunk again with the new settings.. SIGNIFICANTLY, like 20mm smaller on Y after recalibrating on previous session.
I would contact Haotion laser and see if they wont’ just replace the galvo head. At minimum start a communication stream with them.
Sounds like a mechanical issue, as you suspected. If the mechanics are broke you don’t know how. Without knowing how it’s impossible to predict the outcome.
It sounds like one of the axes motors are not working. I don’t know if these are user fixable or not.
If one of these are bad, I would think calibration again is pretty much a useless endeavour. You can’t depend on it going to the same place so it can’t be calibrated.
Have you looked at the motor and or shafts and mirrors… It could be so subtle you can’t see it.
Since the wrong dimensions only occur on the Y axis, I suspect that a mechanical problem is actually the cause. However, it’s unclear what exactly because if the mirror slipped, I would expect there to be other signs as well.
Do this test please:
Engrave a rectangle of 100x50mm.
Swap the two Galvos axes in the Device Settings by clicking on “Galvo 1 is X axis”
Engrave another 100x50 rectangle and compare the two.
The result result should look something like this where all the short sides and the long sides are the same distance.:
So the video didn’t exist when I got my laser. I did follow @LaserEverything video for setup. Intially installed provided config files, scale etc wasn’t as good as I would like so then ran lens correction in Lightburn and made some adjustments until I was happy with everything. Had all measurements within maybe 0.2-0.3mm. Laser had been working happily with these settings for close to 3 months. See attached pic of burn you asked for.
Thank you for the test. I forgot to mention, we also need to see the settings of the device you used for the test.
We received your Support Data in the email and noticed, you have duplicates for both the 210 and the 300mm lens devices with different scale factors for the Y Axis. Are you sure, you chose the correct one?:
Here are the settings used for the test. Yes, I installed the duplicate lenses yesterday and adjusted the scale to get a project completed and to test if this was a problem specific to one lens or all.
I am sure that I used the 300mm lens from this screen shot that had, before yesterday, been working correctly.
For my own sanity’s sake I have ran the original markcfg7 profile in Lightburn provided by Haotian and then ran the same requested size square in Ezcad 2 provided by Haotian. Below are the results. My opinion is definitely starting to lean toward some type of hardware issue after performing this test.
@Mike_B My train of thought about switching the Galvo axes was incomplete!
Of course, when we switched the axes and left the scale as is, it does not give any easy insights because when the orientation changed, the other axis gets scaled.
If you do the same test again but rotate the rectangle after changing the axis (press the . Key) you should get two perfectly aligned rectangles.
It’s seemingly all over the place. I adjusted scale to make it output proper size, and cut another test square. It was good. 10 minutes later it’s now almost 20mm to large on Y with this adjusted scale. I’m at a loss here. The whole point of this machine for me is excellent repeatability.
Had a quick Zoom meeting with a representative of Haotian yesterday afternoon. The consensus would seem to be galvo head has an issue. They are sending me a new one.
Pretty decent service from them, so far pretty happy with how things have been handled.
