Ruida 644x controller on an old full spectrum 48x36
I did the initial setup, adding my foot print, and where my homing location was. (Top Right)
First turn on of the machine it kept homing to the top left and would grind and grind till I turned the machine off. I fixed this with a Polarity change in Machine Settings.
My laser has limit switches. In the diagnostic section of the controller, I can see them both activating when pressing them.
I set X & Z on enable homing
limit switches true on both would make it stop at first switch hit. enabling one would make it do the whole sequence.
My issue I am having is that whenever I turn the machine on it does not do the same thing each time.
one instance, you turn the machine on and it goes till it hits the first limit switch it touches and stops right there. That is the new home.
In another instance, it will actually home itself correctly, but then it moves away from home and starts moving very slowly and stops about 4 inches away from home.
Or when I start the machine up, it will home. but then I try to jog over and it stops at like halfway and won’t go any further.
I’ve been working on this since Monday and would like to try to fire this laser finally.
There is a difference on the Ruida for home and limit switches. Home switches have the negative sign following the name, limit switches are the positive. LmtX- is a home switch input, LmtX+ is a limit switch input.
You don’t have limit switches, as far as I know, so you need to distinguish between them and not confuse one with the other.
On mine, limit switches are ignored until it homes/boots, then home switches are ignored and the limit switches monitored.
If things are erratic, I would make sure all electrical connections are tight.
I experience weird behavior on my machine only during homing, if and when I would finally get it to complete a homing cycle, I could use it all I wanted with no problems, until the next time I had to home it.
Which is why those of us who must look at these things in some detail really really really appreciate when you take the time to upload actual screen shots.
Now you calibrate the X and Y axes so they move the correct distance when commanded:
Note that you measure the distance between lines engraved on a surface, not the size of a cut square, to avoid the discussion of how to take kerf into account.
Well, with the amount of times that the gantry decided to not read the window switches…
It threw my entire mirror alignment off.
I now know how I need to fix this but have to wait till my buddy drops off his reverse laser alignment tool.
I believe my next step, is to cut a 1” x 1” box and measure it. Enter that into the calibration axis so that it can adjust the rotation distance…
Thanks for the help and pointing out good articles.
“Then draw a small rectangle at the origin. Start with 10 x 10 or 20 x 20 mm, like this” - Document you linked.
In my first two start-ups with the new controller, it kept trying to grind itself into the gantry before emergency stopping it.
This caused the mirror ones pedestal screws to loosen up and the mirror is all out of wack now. I can’t cut anything out because the alignment is off pretty bad.
I’ve been working on getting this pile of poop running for a month now and at this point we should have just bought a brand-new one,.
Then the machine thinks it has homed properly. From you operational description I’d expect an error. This means we’re likely going down the wrong trail.
What are you X and Y values after it’s booted? If it failed to boot, you’d have something like 3000mm in both X and Y.
Good point. That’s intended to catch machines grossly off to the other side of the scaling issue.
If I understand your measurements correctly, the machine moves 100 mm when it’s commanded to move 4 inch. That’s fairly close to the right answer (4 inch = 101.6 mm), so starting with a larger square should work fine.
I’d expect Mirror 1 to be well beyond reach of the gantry, but the level of weirdness in these machines continues to surprise me.
You may need to slide the mirror mounts around to center the beam in the mirrors after you get the angular adjustment set up again.
IMHO – We need to let him get the machine up and running to understand what it’s doing. Time fiddling with adjustments is better spent getting it to just boot correctly.
