So I have a few templates for aligning items and hundreds of files. Every time I need to work on the laser for cleaning, etc… it seems to move things around enough so that my cutting templates and drawings are off a few tenths of a mm.
I’ve finally gotten sick and tired of making small adjustments to all my files… now pretty much everything is out of alignment and I have to make test cuts and then corrections to the drawings every time I do something.
Today I went looking through the Rudia control panel for a way to make small X,Y corrections but could not find a way to do it. So then I went to Lightburn to see if there is a way to make global X,Y adjustments and could not find that either.
Any suggestions? There has to be a way to do this.
What exactly is moving at your machine ?, must be something physical / mechanical or what are you compensating for?
In my machine there are some permanent edges which form 00:00 on the X and 00: 00on the Y axis. All my templates are based on this 0:0 and nothing ever moves.
Try to make a picture or explain yourself a little differently, maybe we will find a solution together.
There are several things that end up moving things slightly. The most annoying is to clean the lens I have to take quite a few things apart and when it all goes back together any change moves the beam slightly. First time I kept trying to adjust the 1mm offset back to the original position but gave up when the closest I could get was a correct Y and the X off by 0.3mm. Yesterday I had to re-solder a wire that broke of the z-axis home switch and now it’s off by 1.4mm in X. Every single time I’ve done anything for maintenance it has changed something slightly. My table is bolted down and can’t move. It’s all in the limit switch and lens holding jig. This is my 4th laser. It’s the only one I’ve had problems with this.
Ok, now I understand a little better what you are experiencing. It sounds like your end stops are “moving” and or your entire nozzle holder is not fitted well enough, but you have definitely researched that already.
Do you lose steps once in a while on this machine? I have tried before that one of the gears on the stepper motor was not screwed tight to the shaft with these small ombraco screws, it gave similar symptoms.
But when you clean your lens and you screw it back on properly, it should never give variations of your laser beam, it has nothing to do with the “rest” of the machine. It sounds more like the whole nozzle is not stable enough.
Yes, it’s a bad design. The arm that touches the X limit switch is a bent piece of spring steel on a long un-adjustable screw. I am currently trying to come up with a better solution for that. The focus switch and air assist has to be removed before the lens holder is unscrewed and a locking nut which can move holds that in place (I do have it marked for position). Since I’m not getting any replies that suggest a way to do this through hardware or software I am going to add in screw adjusters for touching those limit switches before making all new jigs and having to deal with this in the future.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had the mechanical endstops, it was on my first machine, an Eleksmaker and I retrofitted them myself.
I just bought 2 of them as backup, this is the type used on my OMT machine.
Since I have to remake all my jigs anyway I did a full cleaning, unbolted and took out the honeycomb table. My real problem is the damn Z-axis setup. The entire base can shift and twist by quite a lot. It was strong enough to stay in place for day to day use but any sort of maintenance risked moving the table around by small amounts. Each corner is tied down with 1 bolt to a platform that can twist on the screw bars that raise and lower the table. With the honeycomb out it is much easier to shift around.
You can only try to make this construction as stable as possible. I do not recognize the problem with the bed, when I use honnycomb or my steel plate they are secured with bolts, nothing moves beyond up and down. However, I have adjusted the frame from the honnycomb so that the angles fit and I have fixed them with additional self-tapping tin screws. If yours is made of aluminum or too loose in general, you can throw it out and mount a flat steel plate.
