LaserUser.com Forum (formerly RDWorksLab)

Yesterday the red and black 80 w laser was delivered. I managed to get the laptop hooked up and engrave a few thing. Then I got confident and tried to hook up the rotary. Once I plugged it in, the y axis now only goes halfway across the bed. The screen thinks it's going to to 500mm but it's clearly not. The x axis is just fine. Has anyone seen this problem? Oh and I forgot to mention that the rotary never did turn.

unless you setup rdworks to use rotary mode, just plugging the y-wire on the rotary is not enough... how would the machine know in which mode it is?

also, you have to calculate the step size for the rotary and enter it in rdworks to have accurate measure. or, if you somehow botched the step size for the Y
-axis, then you will have to correct it to have you correct bed size again. the procedure is in the manual.

and, remember, when you change settings, you always have to READ the parameters first, and modify, then WRITE to the control board. those settings will be remembered on the controller, not on the computer.

Thank you. I'll take a look at the manual.

Brian Menier wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 tried to hook up the rotary. Once I plugged it in, the y axis now only goes halfway across the bed. The screen thinks it's going to to 500mm but it's clearly not. The x axis is just fine.

you wired the rotary, then send motion orders... those orders have not translated to real movement, but the control board THINKS they have been done (remember, with stepper motor you assume the move is done, you have no way to check if it really happened). so even if your laser head is at y=0 in real world, the controller may believe it is at Y=250mm, so it will refuse to move more than 250mm more, as it assumes that it will hit the 500mm limit.

the solution would be to reset the machine to origins, so that the controller would recalibrate on 0,0 position. you can do this directly from the controller (or just reboot the machine, at "normally" it performs a return to origin at startup)

Brian- did anyone suggest you read the FAQs and record your original machine User and Vendor settings?

The thing that bothers me is that the Y axis moves AT ALL when the rotary is plugged in. It's not been plugged in to the driver, I would guess. Maybe the software change has been done, thus limiting Y movement?