I’m getting my new Avid laser deployment system up and running. It has the 45 watt Opt laser. I’m curious to know if there is a way to adjust the laser power when calibrating the X-Y offset. I have the laser switched to the low power setting but when I make a mark with the v-bit in the spindle and then activate the laser in CNC12 to align the laser dot to the mark in the spoil board the laser intensity is enough that it is burning the MDF spoil board faster than I can get the dot aligned to the hole. It seems the laser power is a bit too high for this operation.
Eric. I originally set up the laser in the Acorn Wizard as “custom”. It was my understanding from tech support that this is what was needed to set the proper nozzle height for the XT8. I reverted back to the 15W laser and it seemed to do the same thing.
I was reading the Opt adapter manual and tried a manual test fire directly from the Opt adapter, but nothing seemed to happen regardless what duty cycle percentage I set.
I tried the standard operation again for XY calibration and the laser intensity was much lower. Not sure if there was any relation. This got me pretty close and I figured I would just engrave some short vertical and horizontal lines (X and Y) and manually adjust the offset distances in the Wizard to get it dialed in.
I ran the file a few times last night but noticed on the first try the spindle and the laser powered on, but the laser did not deploy. The V bit cut the lines, spindle raised and stopped, laser deployed and then the laser turned off. It them moved to the offset as it should, powered back on and burned as planned. I thought that was strange so I hit cycle start again and everything worked as it should. I hit cycle start a third time and the laser fired again when the spindle started.
It was getting late so I shut everything down for the night and will try again later today and see what happens after a complete system and PC reboot.
The advice support gave you was fine. The key is that you want custom nozzle settings. Choosing “custom” or “15 Watt” enables the laser PWM which is the most important part. If you don’t have that on your laser will fire at full power regardless of power setting. That could have been why you had trouble doing the XY calibration
That’s interesting… as that test bypasses the Avid control box entirely. I wonder if there’s something wrong with the way you have things plugged in, or the way you are starting that test…
I’m a little confused by this.. let me see if I follow:
You had a toolpath to cut with a V bit, and then you had one that was for the laser. The goal being to see if the laser cut in the same path as the V bit?
If that’s the case, did you have your tool numbers set correctly? Your V bit would have to have been a tool number 1-98 and your laser HAS to be tool 99 (unless you specifically changed that, but very unlikely you did)
That is correct Eric. The file was simply a 3/4" vertical line -Y that turned 90 degrees and ran 3/4" in +X. The cut depth was .015" with a Whiteside SC71 bit. The bit was numbered as Tool 1. The laser was assigned Tool 99. The goal was to see how the laser line corresponded to the light engraving so that I could make small XY offset changes in the Wizard.
Now, that said, I did arm the laser prior to running the file (both the profile and laser toolpaths were saved to one file). I assumed this is correct. I do have the laser firing warning turned on so when the spindle stops I have to confirm before the laser operation begins.
May just be a gremlin, not sure. I did shut everything down including the PC to try again later with a fresh reboot on everything.
Sorry for being scattered here, but I’m half listening to a conference call while I was replying earlier.
Regarding the initial setup in the Wizard, I did have it set to custom which retained all the same information at the 15 watt setup except I changed the nozzle height to .409". I tested the deployment and it sits perfectly where the 21mm height gauge just fits under the shroud as shown in the Opt documentation. I had done a number of test burns prior to configuring the XY offset and had no problems. Power percentages seemed to work fine and the laser functioned flawlessly.
I’ll have to try the test burn through the Opt adapter again. I went into Utils and deployed the laser, then got to the test screen on the Opt adapter and set the duty cycle to 35% and pushed and held the button in, but nothing happened. Up upped the duty cycle to 100% and again nothing happened when pushing the button. Though after playing with the test in the Opt adapter, when I tried the XY offset again, the laser power was much lower than previously tested with it configured both as custom and 15W in the Wizard.
I’m sure this is all user error not fully understanding the process. But the resources here certainly help me keep my sanity when I can’t figure something out.