Hi, I’m a newbie.
I just started using my Sculpfun S-9 laser cutter. I’m trying to cut on 80 lb paper for a model. The cuts are skewed, not at right angles, cuts don’t join where they should.
I made sure all the belts were tightened on the cutter and I gorilla taped the cutter to the table and taped the paper to the table to make sure nothing shifted during the cutting sessions.
Would love any help!
Some pictures of the problem would be nice. Did you also tighten the set screws od the drive pulleys?
Going through the entire mechanical tuning & checkout will show you where to look for problems you have no idea can happen:
In particular, every little setscrew must be tight before the machine will work properly.
Thank you,
will send pics
Thanks for the info. I went through all the steps in the manual except for checking the acceleration parameters in the firmware. [Fiddling around with firmware scares me]. Then I did another test run.
Here is a preview image of the test run:
And here is a pic of the finished laser cut result:
I know it looks like a free hand sketch but that was produced from my laser cutter. Any thoughts?
These discussions may be relevant:
If you didn’t get LightBurn from the official download page, uninstall whatever you have now and do that:
Yes I purchased and downloaded the official Lightburn software last week for $60. from the same website that your link directs to. When I couldn’t get a decent burn, I removed and reinstalled it in hopes that would solve the issue.
I’m really at a loss as what to do.
OK, that rules out a software issue.
The results definitely look like something is loose in the machinery, particularly in the Y axis. Folks are generally astonished when they discover how a tiny bit of slack can cause such visible defects.
Now that you’re familiar with the machinery, go through it again with attention to detail. Start from the motor shaft and work your way to the laser head, looking at every single joint between any two bits of hardware: shaft to pulley, pulley to belt, belt to frame, belt to laser head, and so on.
Some folks have found the entire laser head is loose, occasionally due to factory-installed screws in holes with stripped threads, so it will be worthwhile to give the head a good shake to verify nothing is loose in there.
Everybody wants to blame these problems on the software, but that is almost never the case. You do have a problem with over-burning that can be solved by running a Material Test or two, but the main problem is mechanical.
Thanks, will do and I’ll let you know.
I was wondering if it could be a driver issue. Is there a driver that I should have installed but didn’t?
Could be something like acceleration issue. You didn’t check that. Would need to be quite high to skip steps. You could type $$ into console and post the results.
Nope, even if everybody wants it to be something else.
The machine isn’t “losing steps”, because the overall shape is about the same. If the motors were missing steps, the shape would become progressively worse in one direction or the other.
What’s happening: the laser head does not go to the commanded position, which means there’s something loose between the motor and the laser head.
