I have the famous Ebay blue and grey 50w OMTech laser. I bought in 2020 and it has worked great. It has given me very little problems. But here recently it has developed a mind of its own. For whatever reason the X and Y axis have lost their way and are now showing,10,000 each on the controller screen and the laser head moves and crashes into the side of the machine. My first thought was limit switches. But mine do in fact light up, and on occasion while I’ve been messing with it do give an error on the controller screen and stop the gantry. I do have two brand new ones that I ordered but I have not put them on. Two weeks ago, when this started I figured that what it was, but I let it sit overnight and came back the next day and it just started working …I ran it for about 6 hrs. on several jobs and never had a hiccup. Today I came in to use it and we are back to the same issue again. I have tried to reset and turn off and on and all failed. I am beginning to wonder if my vendor file was somehow changed or became corrupt. I can send screen shots of the files if anyone has any insite and can help me with them.
I did sign up for the rd works forum and actually found a thread with the blue and grey laser but even after I have been approved and can log in to RD works it says I do not have permission to view that file…So I came here as well to ask yall…
I also emailed OMTech but i am sure it will be a few days before I hear from them.
and on a final note, maybe this is my controller failing. My laser is in a room that we do not keep cool when we are gone and here in west Texas it has been getting pretty hot during the day. I do cool the room substantially before I ever use it though.
Sorry for the drawn out post I am just hoping one of you guys can help me out
Thanks for the reply and the link. I will go check it out.
As far as the error it wasn’t really an error message it just popped up on the controller screen that it had hit the limit switch…its acting very strange…I know the limit switches are activating or I let me say the lights in the switches are coming on when the gantry moves over them…I was so happy with this thing and felt so sorry for some of the other folks who had so much trouble with theirs …I guess it was just a matter of time for me
Well, I think I fixed it … I found a vendor file for the same machine on rd works…and was able to download the file …but it’s an rd file…So I had to download rd works and pull the vendor file into that and the write it to the controller…then closed rd works and opened Lightburn and read the controller settings again and then saved them in Lightburn…turned off the machine and back on and it worked …I will save the files from Lightburn and create a backup and see how it goes…so far been running for 30 min on a cup I’m engraving …so cross your fingers I’ll keep everyone updated
well scratch that…worked for one cup…turned machine off and came back today to the same issue…and it does it with both lightburn and RD works …so maybe a controller going bad ???
Didn’t know you had limit switches on your machine.
Everything breaks, so don’t feel bad. Seems like many got ‘great deals’ that didn’t turn out so great… Don’t let it keep you up at nights…
What vendor file were you referring? Anything within the controller isn’t loaded every time you run Lightburn or any other program that I know of. You have to explicitly ask for it.
Mine is in the garage and it’s about 108F out right now. So I doubt that it’s temperature. It sounds like you have a hardware issue.
You need to let me know how the tests of the home switches work.
well after a frustrating night I think I got it fixed… I replaced the one limit switch as it appeared to have one of the wires broken inside of the jacket. I had signal from the switch when the gantry moved to the front of the machine but as I moved it back, I lost signal from the one limit switch. I could tap on the plastic wire chain and the signal would come and go…So I took it apart and changed the one limit switch and then it worked…of course I took the time to do a complete re alignment of the mirrors and got everything back to as good as I can get it and it now works like it was supposed to. and I guess I had a bit of mirror alignment issues because it cuts so much better now…
thank you for all of your help I love places like this that are so willing to help another out
Clint
Also, the limit switch or possible homing switch there are two of the one for X and one for the Y axis I believe … that one was causing all of the issues. I really really do appreciate all of your help
yes, you are correct they don’t…but to replace the limit switch I had to remove the second mirror and since i had to remove the bracket i decided to go ahead and to a mirror alignment as I hadn’t done one in a while
yes, I have two…one is on the gantry that holds the laser head…and it moves back and forth on the rail in the up and down movement (Y axis) …the switch is stationary on that rail, but the laser head is what can trigger it. The other one is in the upper right corner of the machine it does not move but the gantry moving in the X axis can …I hope that makes sense…I can get a few pictures for if that might help
You mentioned doing one cup. Are you using a rotary? The reason I ask is because I went through a similar situation where the carriage slammed into the end stops. I had neglected to deactivate the rotary in lightburn. I powered my OMTech off, reconnected the axis, turned the laser back on and the laser went full speed and crashed into the rear right limits. That may be completely different issue, but it’s what came to mind with your machine issue.
Yes, I was at the time using a rotary…but I started the machine off without it. it homed great so I unhooked the axis and plugged in my rotary and all went great…finished took out the rotary and hooked back up the x axis and shut the machine down…came back the next day to the same problem…but how I finally figured it out was by taking the limit switch off the laser head side and going into the menu on the controller and watching the limit indicator…on the lower half of the machine when the cable was actually extended to its longest point it worked but as a I moved the head to the back of the machine it would lose connection so then I started tapping on the wire chain and the connection would come back with each tap…made sense to me that the wire was broken around that spot…and I had my machine to home at the upper left corner and that why it would crash…the head and all would move to its homing point but there was no limit switch to tell it stop because that direction of travel caused it to lose it connection
I have since changed the switch and all seems to be well now…I suggest if you don’t have any to buy a couple off of amazon as I did, I think they were like 8.00 each …my machine is two years old, but it’s not used daily or even weekly…
