LaserUser.com Forum (formerly RDWorksLab)

This is going to be a report on my adventures with a 1300x1800 double barreled [two tube 130w and 80w] laser
it is a cabinet type machine... not a flatbed. The left side mirrors are for
the 130w tube for cutting, the right side mirrors are for the 80w tube for engraving. That is the
common wisdom, I am not so sure personally. My experiences have been that the larger tubes
can do a very fine job of engraving.

The cutting heads are mounted to the same rail on the gantry...
they can be separated by sliding
the left head [in my case] along the cog belt and clamping it down. The down side to this
arrangement is neither head will have full travel in the X direction... and 1800mm is 70.86 inches
and 1300mm is 51 inches. My goal is to be able to at least lay a 4x6 foot substrate on the bed
and cut as much of it as is possible.

On this machine there is a bed under the cutting table blades which looks like a shallow inverted
pyramid with a tray in the center to catch the debris. I have some experience with this and find
it a workable setup in most cases. The blades are over 48 inches and of course not secured in
the middle, so there is some 'slop' back and forth but very sturdy lengthwise. I have a plan to
add support in the center if needed.

The Z axis is run by two stepper motors originally driven by one large stepper driver. I
immediately had issues with one stepper missing steps and the left getting out of sync with the
right side. That involved getting larger stepper motors which were better able to deal with the
substantial weight of the large bed and one more driver to match the original . After that was
working... a common problem on large cabinets is the left and right periodically getting out of
sync with each other ... so I set it up with a switch to cut the power to one of the drivers... that
allows the left to be independently adjusted to match the right side. So far so good. The front
and rear of each side also need to be adjusted and I devised a setup for that which is a screw on
each front acme screw attachment to the bed so they are now adjustable every which way.
Other wise it is just a [very] big cutting bed with two [mostly] complete laser systems.

I plan to post some of the problems I see and how I am attempting to solve them- as time allows.
I have found that larger machines have unique problems and the larger they get.. the problems do also.
To be continued... Gene

This is going to be interesting and I'm following along.

I was thinking about your laser last night and the Z axis problem you had. This might be a good case to use closed loop steppers so they will never be out of sinc.


https://www.amazon.com/RTELLIGENT-Stepp ... 1VBW&psc=1

It was not just losing steps- it was stalling out. Our theory is they used the same motors as they do on smaller machines and this bed is just soooo heavy that they were way underpowered. There is a place for hybrid steppers but this application really needed more horsepower [I grew up in the 50/60s when Detroit was building some very fast, interesting cars- but still did not have disc brakes to stop them].