My laser cutter is cutting a move/traversal line that doesn’t exist in the Lightburn file or when I Preview cuts and pathing. When viewing the LED console on the machine, it shows the problematic line as a cut line. This issue sometimes presents inconsistently between cut jobs, but sometimes presents in a consistent spot or a specific problematic cut line.
Specs:
Laser: AF2400-100 OMTech 100W, Model USB1060. Ruida, wasn’t able to find out firmware version
Software: Lightburn 1.6.03
Computer: HP Laptop running Windows 11
Troubleshooting methods tried:
*Restart computer and Lightburn
*Used “Send” rather than “Start”
Some history:
I have been successfully cutting with no issues for a few months until a few weeks ago. I started to see different iterations of the same root problem: There is a line being cut that does not exist as a movement/traversal path when Previewing or in the file itself. I had typically been initiating jobs using the “Start” button, and were seeing it happen intermittently. One of the things I noticed using the Start button method is that if the LED display on the machine displayed a certain color for the job, it would have a likelihood of a certain recurring problematic line cutting. I have had several jobs where the same line cuts across my work pieces, then initiated another job and the line position changed. I have looked into this issue but for most of the issues other people have the problematic traversal line exists in their Preview rather than either Lightburn or the machine creating one into existence then cutting it. I would estimate that if I ran 5 of the same job that a majority will have this issue. The most recent breakthrough we have had is when we used “Send” to load the file into the controller and we were able to see the problematic cut line on the machine console before we run a job. Still do not have an idea of how to solve it however. Thanks in advance for any input.
Update on the issue: we seem to have found a solution that works for us for the time being.
We reached out to OMTech customer support and they gave us a few diagnostic steps to troubleshoot the power supply. Before we did those more intensive steps, we tried just deleting the file with the problem cut line and sending the file once more to the laser via the “Send” button. This seems to have worked, and the preview via the controller did not show any problem lines and the file looked as expected. We did a test cut and the cut also came out as expected. Hopefully this is the full solution to the problem and in the future if this problem happens again we can just resend the file. If that doesn’t work, we will have to look into the power supply.
I am thinking your suggestion that the file is being damaged in transit is likely the answer. Today I have been using the “Send” button to continue to send files to the laser and one of the times on a different file I had another extra line added which I was able to see on the console preview. I went ahead and deleted that and resent it via “Send” and it previewed properly the second time. Once the preview was correct, the resulting cuts were also correct.
We have been using wireless/ethernet rather than USB. However, our router is rather far from the laser, maybe 60 feet away. So far, sending the file once then running it multiple times via console has not had any issues as long as the preview checks out. I will have to keep monitoring the situation but so far so good.
The killer is having the geometry or cut parameters randomly changed in transit; it may not be as easy to observe as an added (or deleted) line.
A 100 foot CAT6 cable will set you back under twenty bucks: run one temporarily between the router and the Ruida to help decide if it’s a WiFi problem or a duplicated IP address:
If the cable makes the problem Go Away™ permanently, then you know WiFi is introducing errors.
If the errors still occur, then it’s most likely trouble with the router’s DHCP IP assignment overlaying the Ruida’s IP address.
Check for the DHCP problem anyway, because it seems to hit a lot of unsuspecting machines.
