I disconnected my Rotary. Hooked up my laser’s aviator plug, and now my Y-axis only spans half way down to around the middle of the bed. I had Monport’s US tech on the phone yesterday. He was unable to help. He escalated the ticked to an engineer at Monport.
I found out that the password to my Ruida Controller is rd8888. Found that out this a.m. So when you plug that number in I should be able to reset the x/y as well? There are other selections like just the X, just the y too.
I can’t get my y-axis to come down past 399.9. No rotary is attached, and the PC is off. I should be able to fire up the laser, press the arrows to position the head anywhere on the bed the way it used to be. Now the down arrow will only take me to almost mid bed.
Rich and I did a double check in LB and everything is fine. 24x16 working space. I drew a 20x14 square and tried to frame it. Y-axis only came halfway down.
What is the process you follow when switching to using rotary. I assume the process to reverse that is just undoing those steps but if they steps are different, can you document that as well?
Is this the reported position from the controller? What would you normally expect this to be?
I’m asking because 16" in millimeters is roughly 400 mm. The controller likely believes it’s moved the entire span of the bed in Y.
If that’s correct, this is likely a Y calibration issue.
However, this only makes sense if part of your rotary setup process includes changing this during swapover. So want to confirm. If that’s the case, then it should only be a matter of reversing out the change.
You should be able to go to a backup state if you go to File->Load Prefs Backup.
Ummmm, Rich and I, the support guy in the US had me go through the normal steps to reset the laser after rotary work. I believe we unplugged the rotary while the laser was on. Then plugged up the laser’s aviator plug, then pressed RESET button on the controller panel. It homed back to x/y top right back corner where the display shows 0/0.
I’ve been working in the lower left operator side for 6 months as the image shows. Now the gantry only stops 1/2 way down to 399.9
Having said that. I was always confused why the laser would always not let me cut/engrave real close to that area. I would get slop errors if I did. I understand now what the message really means.
It seems like now, I have to engrave/cut in the top 1/2 of the bed which you should probably do, and I can used to that but it seems visually that I’m only getting 1/2 of my bed to use now with regard to the y-axis.
Rich and I made sure machine origin was correct, and job origin matched. Basically I just drew a rectangle, and it wouldn’t frame all of it. Just the top half. I do remember though when I first started to use this machine, my first BTW, that I would put a large piece in the bed, and I always found that I had like 2" gap at the top, that would not burn, as well as 2" gap near the sides.
It never made sense to me why my bed is larger than my actual working space is. Seems a waste, but maybe that extra space was a place for the head to slow down, and reverse. Now that I’m picking up more knowledge on the subject.
I may not have been clear enough in my previous post. I’m asking if you believe the machine should move down to something like 800. Has it worked that way in the past? If you have a 16" bed on the Y then it would make sense that you’d have roughly 400 mm of reported travel.
If 400 mm is actually the amounted of expected reported Y travel then it’s just the controller believing that it’s moved the full length of travel but not physically moving the stepper motors enough.
So just to confirm, you make no changes to Machine Settings when you shift to using Rotary?
Can take a full screenshot of LightBurn and post here please?
When I get home today, around lunchtime, I’ll take a screen shot of my LB setup.
Yes, I expect the gantry and head to move all the way down to the bottom half of my bed near the bottom left corner. It’s where I’ve worked for 6 months even though that may not be the “proper” area to work in… Working size in device settings has been 24x16.
This was on my invoice as well. Monport 55W (16" x 24") CO2 Laser Engraver & Cutter with FDA Approved × 1
When I started to work on rotary work last week, the only thing I changed was machine origin. We changed machine origin to the bottom left corner to get my tumblers to engrave properly. I don’t remember changing anything else with regard to the laser.
For giggles today, I’ll place a sheet of ply on my bed which will take up my entire bed. I’ll draw a 22x14 square and try to burn a line on it and capture a video of it.
Somehow I’m not making myself clear. I understand the expected behavior of the gantry but that’s not what I’m asking.
Have you ever seen the Y-coordinate value ever exceed 400? In my estimation, I would not expect it to since 400 mm is roughly what would be the equivalent of 16 inches. You’re hung up on the value stopping at 400 but that might not be the issue. I’m speculating that the value should not be over 400 and that the only issue is that the gantry is not moving as far as you expect even if the value is correct. This implies a Y-axis calibration issue.
At a minimum I’d expect you to engage the rotary setting.
Instead of 22x14, I’d suggest going for a true square of something like 14x14. If my hypothesis is correct, the burn should come out roughly to 14x7 inches.
I’ve never looked at the display panel on my laser while working to be honest, short of getting slop error messages, where I had to press escape. I’ve never looked at x/y values on the display. Never needed to.
I will try to score a piece of ply 14x14 today.
Sorry, yes I did enable the rotary in LB. I just didn’t screw around with Machine Dimensions and such.
