Hi guys, I need some help if someone may recognise the issue and what that may be.
The machine I have is extremely old and I got it with some problems I didn’t know about, but after the replacement of belts and carriages on x and y linear rails I was happy how it was working for the things I do (mainly cutting thin adhesive films and some engraving here and there).
The machine was stationary for a while, and when I tried running a design it started behaving strangely, engraving design is “pulled” to the side. (The required design)
Then it gets better and I noticed that the behaviour is better or worse in different parts of the table.
The other example is cut outs, the line is extremely wobbly, but then at the certain point it’s almost perfect. My first thought was to check belts and mirror alignment, but the tension seems to be ok. And considering the machine was stationary, I’m not sure what could possibly change.
It is very likely a mechanical problem. Even though you write that you checked the belts for tension, the problem can be found either here or in the pulley itself. Start by checking if the small pinion screws have come loose, this is an often overlooked problem.
Look for a slightly loose pulley / flex coupler screw, perhaps in the jack shaft across the back of the cabinet. Some machines have a small belt from the Y axis motor to the jack shaft that can be totally worn out without being visible.
That suggests a problem with the linear rails, perhaps being misadjusted or having a few loose screws along their length. A mechanical problem, like a bad bearing or a buildup of crud, can cause anything loose to rattle around, so the machine may have multiple problems contributing to the visible symptoms.
To some extent, cutting at relatively high speeds will show off even the slightest instability. These tests at various speeds show a reasonably tight machine can still have small wobbles:
I think that’s the distinction between LightBurn’s Line and (the several) Fill layers.
The controller doesn’t know what happens to the material, but it does know whether it’s following a vector or scanning back-and-forth over a region. The former is a “cut” and the latter is an “engraving”.
It also knows whether the tube should be firing, which AFAICT is the difference between “idle” and “cut” vector parameters.
Not that I’ve ever seen such things defined in one place, but it pretty much hangs together from hints scattered through all the manuals and some circumstantial evidence.
Edit: I’ve been trying, with little success, to use “mark” for what we all call “engraving” along a vector.
I read that RDWorks has an option to select cut or engrave… Maybe that’s the key. Using Linux, I don’t/can’t use RDWorks.
So if I’m engraving a vector, no fill, then it’s a cut operation – taking the same vector file and using fill changes to engrave? Is this an assumption?
Makes sense to me, if only because I don’t see any other way to distinguish the operations.
I find the RDWorks manual essentially incomprehensible, but it has this to say on the subject:
Processing Mode: This setting controls how the corresponding layer is processed. If the current layer is a vector layer (i.e., isa color layer), it includes three choices: Scan = Engraving, Cut = Cutting, and Dot = Dotting. If the current layer is a BMP layer (bitmap image), the Scan mode is only available.
So “Scan” involves back-and-forth motion over images or shapes, while “Cut” applies to vectors.
I think LightBurn’s Dot Mode is different than RDWorks’ Dotting. I vaguely recall somebody being unable to reproduce the dots on an acrylic light diffuser / grating in LightBurn that was easy-ish in RDWorks.
…I forgot that on my list, but it is also one of the most frequent causes of “wobbling”