I just set up my new Zbaitu 80w machine but the movement on the x axis is plagued by lagging like the belt is sticking, always the worst when it first starts a project or trying to frame, after framing a few times it gets better but still returns to zero at a point off from where it started.
any thoughts?
Something mechanical is wrong in the X-axis.
Turn the power off and slowly move the axis by hand. Look and feel for anything binding or sticking or loose or interfering with smooth motion.
This discussion, although it started from a slightly different symptom, covers pretty nearly all the things to check:
You should probably check the Y axis while you’re in there, because it may develop similar problems.
@Sjvek I have an M81 81x46 model and since it is only a partly built kit when you receive it I found I had to fiddle with the mechanics a good bit both while and after assembling it to get things lines up and moving smoothly.
I noticed you should disconnect the stepper motor cables if you are moving them around much by hand even without power. When you are pushing things around with your hands, the stepper motors act as electric generators and will create enough power to make the blue controller board light on the bottom of the controller circuit board turn on. So it would appear there might not be enough diode protection dumping the power it is creating someplace safe. I do not see that to be a good thing.
The manual that came with mine was not completely correct in the assembly, but the electronic version of the manual was much closer. If you have the dual fan laser, it is not in most of the manuals and the mounts and mechanics are a little different. One of the diagrams has a piece it showed mounting backwards. The electronic version was more accurate. The air line bumps into the frame depending on how it is routed and whether your air assist came with a 90 degree fitting. Mine did not and I had to make one. Without the 90 degree adapter, depending on the laser height, it hits the left side Y axis rail and prevents it from bumping into the tiny limit switch with the X-axis wheel.
Also on mine with the dual steppers for the Y axis, I have to force home it before every start I want to be accurate and repeatable because there is no linkage between the two motors other than stepper power pulses. Some of their models have a taller gantry and a drive shaft between the two Y-Axis rails. Mine is the low profile and does not.
The tension adjustments on the belt drives is a bit fiddly and has not adjuster other than pulling them apart tightly enough while you tighten the screws. Also I found the toothed drive wheels needed to be loosed and shifted on the X and Y axis so the belts would line up and be in a straight line with the track and the teeth in the stepper motor gear.
One more thing is that I also leave the laser head unplugged all the time unless I am engraving since when you power it up or the power resets for some reason, the laser comes on at full power while the controller is booting and burns a hole in whatever happens to be below it at the time. As it has no power switch, if you bump the power cord while you are sliding the laser head or checking for clearance or something, you can zap something important like you! I put the laser power supply and air assist on a power strip to help with this some as well.
I’ve noticed a lot of the same things, also the difficulty in adjusting the x axis belt. I think the real culprit is that there is only one x-axis motor and its to wimpy for such a large machine. Even running smoothly the lag caused by having to draw on such a long belt becomes cumulative and when it comes time to do the next layer its off. You’ll notice the smaller y axis has 2 motors one at each end and has no lagging issues.
If you fire the laser and draw a small dot exactly where the beam is, then have it frame a large area a few times does it return to the exact same zero or slightly off?
I have the 1/2 expanded version that is 46cm x 81cm. There really is not a belt tension adjuster for the Y, just how hard did you pull the belts when assembling the Y axis frame. I have more trouble with the Y axis keeping the two motors in synch than the X axis missing steps currently.
On the X axis a similar issue in that the tension is controlled by loosening the screws and tugging until I was happy… Not very precise or repeatable to adjust.
After adjusting it is repeatable for the most part. It did take some tweaking to get the axis snug but not binding and such.
The camera ZBAITU sells/supplies is not very useful with Lightburn thus far. Getting it calibrated has been very unproductive. I think 1920x1080 2M pixels is not sufficient for such a large bed and it seems the LB can’t really interpret what it spits out even though it looks great to a human. 8M-16M would be a better camera resolution for this I think.
I do not know if it is LB or the camera, but it appears to be a little of both. Many of the comments I see calibrating other brands of cameras with LB include examples like mine where sequential captures during setup get wildly varying images/scores/results with little repeatability… No real explanation I have found thus far.
I think that so far the evidence indicates the API’s being used by LB have some issues with certain cameras even though they work with Windows camera app just fine. The camera supplied by ZBAITU uses the generic windows USB camera drivers. I also tried a Logitech webcam and it works a little better from a glitch point of view but the 1920x1080 is still too coarse to be very useful and the Logitech lens would require 4 feet of vertical height to cover the 81x46cm bed completely. That makes the laser camera mount way too wobbly and so would have to be mounted from the ceiling or something…
As of now my machine turns on at full power every time it’s plugged in and I can’t turn the beam off, I think its time to return this thing
Sounds like the controller board might have died… They can tell you how to check with a multimeter. They have a new unit coming out in a few days with everything done for you in a box. Air assist, enclosure, etc… Check their Facebook page.
Theirs is a low cost for the power, but it is not really polished on these larger sizes IMHO anyway. I can make it work, and it would have cost significantly more to get the same optical power when I was looking for a more polished solution. (I am taking them at their word that it is 20W of power)
They have been friendly to work with, so maybe they will help you out.
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