Looks like you’re on to something… 
Remember, the chuck should rotate one turn and back…
Agreed. Now with it set at 10,000, it maybe does 2/3 rotation and back. Even when I change it to 12,160 again, it does the same. (Now it does one full turn at 18,400 SPR…) I think I’ll cut my losses and try again tomorrow at this point. And now if I power the laser off and then back on, it does a really slow rotation and takes a couple minutes before I can access the device. I’ll probably call in tomorrow and see about factory resetting it, but my buddy doesn’t have the password…LOL
Thanks for all of your help.
This should work… something is amiss…
What do you need a password to?
Sometimes it’s good to kick back and relax… the little gray cells keep working while you relax…
I was reading the manual for the 50W Omtech and what the controller menus will allow you to do. I thought if I had to reset to factory, I may need it. It’s definitely supposed to be 10,000 steps/rotation, so maybe I need to see if the controller shows the correct steps.
The only other thing I’m not fully clear on is the steps to swap Y for Rotary Y and what needs to be reset/“homed”. I’m used to the XTool D1 where I can move the gantry by hand to the proper rotary location. Can’t do that on CO2…LOL
Not sure I’ll get back to it after work. Getting nice out and yardwork is calling.
If you don’t do a backup of the setting in the controller and you do a factory reset, your machine won’t work until you figure out how the vendor set it up… All the vendor settings will be gone, such as motor steps… In other words deep 
You should, as a routine, make a copy of the factory settings of any controller device… just like you do on your own home computer 
Including those on the Ruida … from Edit → Machine settings and save it to a file. Place it away as a safe prime copy of your factory settings… when you break it, you can reset it…
These are supposed to be easy… you (we) are making this much more difficult than it should be, so we should examine what’s happening in more detail and isolate it to one side or the other…
Set the gui for the rotary to your steps/rotation on the switches (5000, I think)…
Press test and watch the motor pulley do it’s one compete turn and back.
If it’s correct the problem is after the motor shaft… if it fails it’s before the motor shaft…
Make sense…?
Use the … KISS principal …
Perfect. KISS principle. Brings up old memories of Airman Leadership School.
Playing a little hookie and just did the above. Drive wheel cycles a little more than 1 revolution, then back. I have the rotary sitting outside of the laser so I can put a sharpie mark on it and line it up with masking tape. So the issue is before the motor shaft. I am going to cycle through the RUIDA menu to see what all of the settings show and write them down. It may be as simple as a machine setting, I hope.
Something isn’t making sense…
If the pulley does slightly over 1 turn, then the rotary should rotate slightly over 1 turn…
You previously stated it only turns 2/3 rotation? This data kind of conflicts…
Do us both a favor, stay out of the Ruida configuration until we figure something out… You shouldn’t have to do this under normal circumstances…
Agreed. I’m staying out of the controller. Turned it off and tried again. When you turn on the laser, the x/y resetting process takes a long time. First does about 3 revolutions one way at a reasonable speed, then goes the other way very slowly for a long time. Then back the original way very slowly for a short time.
Ran the test again at 10,000. Drive wheel (motor) still goes just more than 1 revolution (which means the driven goes a little over 1/2 revolution.) It’s possible I typo’d the earlier one from Sunday.
Anything in the machine settings I should be looking at since 10,000 should be correct, but it’s not working?
Stay out of it… worse comes to worse you can adjust it via the steps/rotation and/or the ratio… It’s a digital system, keep it that was a far as we can.
Remember these settings also apply to your Y axes … don’t want to break that…
If you are sure it’s motor driver is 5000steps/rotation … with no other options, I’d suggest you fudge the steps/rotation around to get as close as possible to the one rotation test option… That shouldn’t break anything else or require you to re-load things… that’s really a pain…
This isn’t right as far as I’m concerned… Stay out of the controller…and make a backup of it…
Good luck
Thanks. I am going to try and track down my buddy’s original order info and email OMTech support, too, and verify the ratio, which didn’t come with my rotary order. I may pull the rotary and do some more flat work testing since that was never an issue.
Come to think of it, I may also have the flash drive from OMTech that came with the laser and I would think it has the original settings.
I appreciate all of your help.
And you’d be sol… you are very optimistic …
Edit → Machine Settings → Save
You… Were Correct, Sir! 
Set it up for 18,400 and the chuck did a perfect 1 turn back and forth. Then ran a test burn with a letter E like I had on Sunday. This time, it stretched the E completely out when comparing it to the original. I’m going to go mow lawn and take a break… I have a call in to OMTech but supposed to get a callback in 24-48 hours…ouch.
The end product must be that the chuck rotate one turn and back… Instead of 10000, you have 18400 for a complete turn…
This should work… Did you enter the diameter?
I did. I think I’m just going to try and go back to flat work and make sure it works with the back up from that configuration file. Then try again on the rotary at some point.
Went back to flat work and reloaded that config file. Worked like a champ. Lowered bed, powered off. Plugged in rotary (using flat work config file), turned on, enabled rotary and set to 10,000 steps. Now, instead of only a little over 1/2 rotation for the “test”, it’s “almost” 1 full rotation. Missed my OMTech tech support call while at work, so I am now on a callback schedule for Saturday, hopefully.
Watched a Louisiana Hobby Guy video on CO2 rotary setup and he was not a fan of changing anything in the machine settings, but rather just the “move speed” from the console. Hard to say who’s right.
Decided to run a test frame on a rectangle that would wrap completely around the tumbler. Hooked up the tumbler to rotary, ran one more “test” and it went back to the previous just over half rotation. Shut it off, walked away. Decided not to give up. Looked at the machine settings again and didn’t change anything, but just hit write.
Tried the rotary “test” again and it is spot on. Don’t ask me what I did differently, but fingers crossed, this is going to stick.
I think now, my only real question is the order of operation for switching between Y and Rotary Y. Machine off, etc… And should I be hitting escape when the rotary is plugged in and turned on to stop it from “trying” to home.
I really hope this is the final stop and I can get this bad boy going.
These are digital machines… From the computer hardware to the motor, there is no fudge factor, in a digital system.
The only time variation can occur is when something analog is involved in the chain of operation … usually belts, gears, pulleys or wheel diameter.
I have changed many things to get the rotary to perform correctly and have rotary configuration files for various projects… So I don’t follow his logic…
I also don’t follow what move value he’s referring that will affect the rotary and correct something a hardware/configuration… and how to be able to repeat it…
IMHO, I’d try and locate the issue. If you have a change after a re-boot of the controller, I think that’s indicative of another issues and I’d definitely ask OMTech about it… If you lose steps or something, that’s one thing, but I’d question a change in how the rotary responded.
Good luck… let us know what happens…
Watching the MW Laser video (episode 2) on chuck rotary axis configuration. Learning a ton about how to set up idle speed, read settings in RDWorks, backup, etc… One thing I noticed when doing some testing yesterday is that if I have the chuck roller on the left side of the bed, I had to invert the image output to get it to be correct. So of course I switched around my custom chuck holder shown previously so the chuck is on the right side. I don’t like having to invert the image so I can see it correctly in the preview window.
Watching MW Laser’s video, I saw some differences in his X and Y axis settings in RD Works and I’m wondering if this is where you tell it which way to spin the Y axis when the rotary is enabled.
Does it have anything to do with the X and Y direction polarity? One of mine is positive, the other is negative. No big deal either way, but I kind of like having the chuck on the left, but don’t want to see an inverted image when previewing.
When I got my PiBurn rotary, I had to do the same thing…
Most of the are two phase motors and the phases are swapped… I swapped them at the connection and now my rotary is positioned correctly.
I don’t use RDWorks and this is Lightburn, so I have no idea about those settings.
The idea is to just put your rotary in and use it… this may fix your issues, but it would require you to switch them every time you change to a rotary and back. It also depends on how the controller → motor driver is wired…
Open the end of the connector a swap the wires, then you can swap your rotary back to where it should be. How these are wired is kind of a crap shoot. There is no definition defining how they are wired… I usually find they work, sometimes it’s just mirrored… like mine and yours…
