I was cutting out some parts from a dxf last night, trying to find the right settings to get the cut I wanted. But the machine kept putting errant cuts. On a shape made up of several joined arcs, for example, it seems to have started outside of one of the arcs and ended past the end of the last one. On another cut, it was as though it offset the first arc, cut it, then cut a line to where the next arc started. I don’t know if that conveys well what I observed or not. A picture is worth 1000 words, so I’ll get some pics of the bad parts when I get home tonight. Has anybody else seen this behavior on the new laser? I’m going to use the red one now that it’s back up and running like normal because I can’t be wasting material. (It’s not my material.)
So, the item on the left was cut on the red laser without any trouble. The other two were cut on the green laser from the same dxf. The plot on the screen looked fine. Ideas?
No, i don’t think I did, but I’m not sure how that would cause this error. The mating piece is identical except for the notch in the bottom and it cut fine. I also find it odd that it didn’t fail in the same spot. I’ll be back down there tonight to cut the rest of the pieces now that I have settings that will work on the red machine. Time and access permitting, I may look at it again.
Were the 2 on the green laser (with the same dxf)… were they the exact same job? As in did you run the exact job twice? Or did you reload the dxf in a new job in the queue?
Also… have you checked your vector file to see if you have lines duplicated on top of each other? My experience is that duplicated vectors placed exactly one on top of the other can cause strange things sometimes when output. Although I haven’t used laser web too much.
I loaded it twice, thinking something might have happened on the first one. I was trying to get my settings figured out so I didn’t spend a lot of time troubleshooting it. I will double check to make sure there aren’t two curves on top of each other, but I traced these curves by hand and I don’t think that happened. I know that sometimes caused sections to not get cut on the red laser and it cut the file without issue, so I think I’m right about there not being multiple lines there. Again, I’ll check when I get home tonight.
BTW, does anybody know if RDWorks handles splines? Laser Web doesn’t, but it would be handy if it does.
Hello everyone, I’m a new laser user and have only learned on Luigi. I know this thread is a little old, but I’ve had issues with errant tool paths as well in probably 3 out of the 4 times I’ve used it so far (including the small test file I did during the class). The issues have affected cuts as well as scan mode.
In scan mode, it has shifted blocks of lines left or right or both. I’ve also experienced cuts that have gone awry similar to whateg01 described above, only more pronounced. It’s like the cutting path somehow becomes completely shifted but then corrects itself. On one occasion, I was cutting a finger joint box with a floral heart pattern on the end. It miscut the first one, then I simply re-ran the same file to try again (without reloading or anything), it screwed up in a different spot, then I reran it a 3rd time and it cut fine.
I will try to post some pictures after I get home. At this point I need to figure out if I’m doing something wrong so I can correct the issue to prevent wasting time and materials.
For reference, I created the files in Illustrator CS5 and verified they were all closed paths. I’m pretty confident there weren’t any duplicate paths. I imported to the machine from the .AI file.
Sure thing Christian–I have the files with me now but since I’m a new user it’s not letting me upload them. I can e-mail them to you if you want. The valentines boxes I did were straight from an .ai file, settings were something like 85% power @15mm/s for cut; 60% @ 400mm/s for scan. Last night I did another box which started as an .ai file, but I had to make an adjustment to the cut lines so I opened in inkscape and saved as a .dxf. Those settings were 80% @ 12 mm/s cut and 25% @ 200mm/s scan. I had shifting and errant cuts in both projects. Both were done on “1/4"” maple plywood which is actually more like .205"
Looks like I’m able to upload files now. Here’s the .ai file I used for the Valentine’s boxes (caseplans.ai). The .dxf file I had to generate last night is over the size limit, but the .ai file I started from is not so I’ll attach that (St. John’s box). Again, I had to open that file in inkscape and adjust some of the cutlines then save as .dxf. I’ll post the shifting and errant cuts from that file this evening. On the St. John’s box, I know there are some issues with the type but I’m not concerned with that here. The top part of the Celtic cross shifted on me and the cut line for the box’s base mis cut toward the middle of the right hand side–I’ll post pictures this evening.
How were you running your jobs? Were you running them directly from RDWorks or were you sending them to the laser and running them from the control panel?
If you hit the “Download” button it will upload it to the laser and you can run it from the control panel. I would suggest trying that next time to see if you get different results. It may be an issue with streaming the file over the USB port while it cuts. We’re currently testing out some new software so we could also give that a shot if you continue to have issues.
It’s also possible that there is a mechanical issue, but I don’t really think that’s it. I’ll try to check out the mechanics tomorrow while I’m over there just in case.
Thanks so much Christian. I always hit the download button but then hit run on the software. I assumed it was running from the file on the machine. I’ll try running from the control panel next time and see if that improves things. I agree it seems more like an issue caused by something like USB latency rather than a mechanical issue.
Just wanted to post an update that I ran a fairly intricate project on Luigi last week and tried running the program from the control panel instead of the software and had zero issues. I had assumed before that pressing download from the software and then running from the software it was initializing the program from the downloaded copy on the machine. Looks like that wasn’t the case and latency issues over USB was causing hiccups.
Thanks again Christian for pointing me in the right direction! It might be a good idea to highlight this process in the training class or maybe just put a note by the Luigi computer.
I finally sat down with Luigi last night while installing the new focus probe. I am now pretty confident that my initial thought and @jarrodthome’s subsequent observations were correct. If you hit the ‘run’ button in the software it streams the file over the USB port, even if you hit the ‘download’ button first to send it to the controller. In order to run the file on the machine you have to select it from the control panel. Running it from the machine should be more reliable because it eliminates the USB port and computer software as sources of latency and errors.
This should be added to the wiki and mentioned in the laser class.
