Both of the lasers are down in case anyone planned on using them.
Any idea what the problem is? I haven’t seen any email or forum posts before this to say that there are problems.
Steve
FabLab Lead
Auto focus on Mario is broken and a piece of Luigi’s cutting head looks like it had been removed. Both of them were tagged out of order.
Hmm… Okay. Maybe someone is working on them. I can come by this evening if I need to.
Steve
FabLab Lead
I checked out Mario and it seems to be functioning normally. The auto-focus worked as designed for me. Whoever wrote the note, I’d be curious to know what problem you had. In any case, I removed the out of order sign on that one.
It appears someone is part way through a procedure on Luigi that I don’t know about. If anyone knows what the story is there, please let us know and let me know if something is needed.
Steve
FabLab Lead
3 Likes
I haven’t touched it.
Mario had a head crash and the auto focus stopped working. Me and a few others managed to get the head out of the bed and re-leveled. I was under the impression that fablab had been emailed but i guess not. Ill try to be more diligent next time
Luigi has been tagged out for over a week, I assumed it was Christian and Steve but I guess not? Well that’s confusing - who removed the head?
Also I am still in favor of getting rid of autofocus and training everybody to just measure their heights. Every damage event we have seems to start with an autofocus, am I wrong?
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@Dje4321, thank you for that explanation. One additional question, did the head crash happen during an auto-focus operation, or did it happen as a result of something else?
I believe that Luigi was operational last Monday (maker Monday) but I don’t know about since then. I should be able to come work on it tomorrow (Wed), thought I would certainly appreciate knowing how and why things ended up in the state that they are.
@kim, I’ve been wondering the same thing regarding the auto-focus, but I would like some clarification from anyone that has experienced a head crash recently. Has it happened during the auto-focus operation, or has it happened outside of that?
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I was on Luigi last Tuesday morning. It worked fine for me. The gentleman on Mario was having some trouble. I forget his name. I had Mario reserved, but he was already working on it and Luigi was free so I used it.
Mary
Im not sure. I wasnt there for the crash. I just helped get it out
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I think that is a great idea. If we convert one of the machines to manual focus to start we could just watch and see if we get decreased down-time.
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Luigi is working again, however the auto-focus is currently NOT installed. I put a note on the machine and on the computer desk to say that you should not use the auto-focus at this point in time.
I was not able to figure out a way to disable the auto-focus feature. If someone else knows how, I’d like to know. The good news, however, is that if you do hit the auto-focus button, the bed goes down rather than up. Still, I’d like to find a way to disable it so that it doesn’t do anything.
The auto-focus is certainly fixable, but I’m not able to do it tonight and given the discussion above, maybe we should try it for a little while as it is. Comments on that are welcome.
Steve
FabLab Lead
3 Likes
Is there a documented procedure for manually focusing? Or does it say somewhere what the correct height and datum is? I haven’t used the new software yet, and was going to come down and cut some stuff this weekend. I’ll check out the software beforehand, but would prefer to use a known good process vs. wasting time with trial and error.
AFAIK you just raise the bed slowly until the block just barely drags on the head. If anybody knows better than feel free to correct me
Yes, this is correct. There is a yellow, 3D printed, 7mm tall block that should be on or near the laser cutter. The manual focus procedure is to move the laser head up and down until this block just slides between your work piece at the tip of the laser head with no extra space. In most cases it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect to get a good result.
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Do you know what specific models Mario and Luigi are? I’m curious to know because I need to search up a manual for those machines.
If anyone had something with a deadline. I have a 45w glowforge pro laser at home. Let me know if you would like to use it.
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