The machine has been working flawlessly until I realized that the Z-axis’ steps/unit were off. It was only moving around one tenth of the distance it was supposed to so big dummy me decides to set it to properly land where it was told to go.
Well, that was corrected and now travels as commanded. However, that introduced another issue that I should have thought about before messing around.
I told the machine to do the focus routine and BAM, it crashed into the upper limits and even jacked the laser head and its rails up before I could hit the e-Stop. DANG!
The Homing Offset in the Z parameters was set to 79. The focus was set to 5.182. (My numbers).
Now I begin to do the proper calculations to match the amount of actual movement needed based on the new steps/unit. Looks like I may have that portion figured out as the red dot appears to be landing at the backoff point where the laser’s pulse would leave its mark.
Now the fun part… there’s a pause at that moment, but the bed no longer stays there but continues to drive downward to its lower limits crashing into the bottom. DANG AGAIN!
So I’ve been making changes to the original “79” number thinking that I should make adjustments in that number as well. Doesn’t matter… even if I put in “3” the bed continues downward after the pause.
I’ve Enabled Relative Z moves, disabled Relative Z moves and set the flag for “Move from Machine Zero” on the Move tab and unchecked the flag just in case I’d inadvertently clicked it.
At some point I may want to be able to use the “Z steps per pass” so I thought I’d get ahead of the ballgame and set it up.
Either way, I wanted the table height to move as required. Having the steps/unit off seemed like the very first place to start.
So here’s what I’ve learned today.
I loaded in the saved vendor setting files from a backup and gave it a whirl. Of course the axis calibrations were off but that didn’t affect the outcome. The auto-focus pen triggers and properly sets the Z height to zero (forget about Homing offset and focus offset for the moment). However, once the zero height is found and paused, the bed continues to move downward.
I’ve reinstalled LightBurn 1.4.05
Oddly, I found the controller at an older version of its firmware and I have a screenshot image from back in May 2023 where I’d upgraded it to RDC6445G-V15.01.30-LIB. Have no idea when or how it reverted to RDC6445G-V15.01.22-LIB. I did the upgrade in May to be able to utilize the U-axis with this controller and managed to get that going so I know I did in fact do the upgrade.
I do see the LED for Pin-5 light up and go out during the focusing process.
I’ve done multiple resets as well.
Complete power downs, etc., all the usual things to try.
Still at a loss here and wondering if the controller has somehow been corrupted.