The laser gauge on the fusion is gone. Someone or something looks to have broken it. I looked but couldn’t find the missing gauge to try to reattach it or utilize it in any manner. Is anyone aware that the gauge is gone, and if so, is anyone working to have it replaced?
@michaelb Any idea if it’s going to be replaced? If so, we should order a handful. I suspect they get damaged by people autofocusing while the manual spring is flipped down.
Is the fusion down until the manual gauge is replaced? Sorry, complete newbie here…
I didn’t see a sign on it and proceeded to attempt to engrave a powder coated mug. It took several passes before making a legible image. I’m guessing I didn’t have it properly focused. I didn’t see this post until after beginning to troubleshoot after the first run.
I’m holding off on the rest of the work I had left until it’s shown to be resolved.
I believe @cvrana ordered the last one. He might have gotten spares, but I didn’t find them. I’m not sure if any more have been ordered. @trapezium might be able to order them as well.
The autofocus will work for flat parts in the meantime, but no the rotary is probably down until it’s replaced.
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I haven’t actually ordered anything related to the fusion in the past. The closest I’ve come is being the person who’s done the calibrations for the autofocus, but in terms of actually ordering pieces, that wasn’t me.
For clarity, what exactly on the fusion is broken? Is it the autofocus plunger, the manual focus spring, or something else?
The manual focus spring was missing for sure.
I’m not sure if the weak cuts I had were due to that alone, or if there was something in addition not working properly. I tried to set the height to what I’m assuming is the autofocus plunger.
Sorry then, David thought you had.
The manual focus spring is shot. It’s in the top of the yellow tools box.
Here’s the other thread where it was reported. So, should we change the title on the other thread to Fusion instead of Epilog?
https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/t/epilog-laser-jammed-10-21/84878
So it looks like both someone missed their material with the auto focus (anyone who’s teaching this class needs to stress how to use that properly, because oh my god ><) and the manual focus is missing.
We… probably need to mark the fusion as down for a bit, then. Crashing the auto focus head will have knocked that out of calibration (I’ll fix it next time I’m up, but it may take a week), and without the manual focus we don’t have a way to get the fusion to focus properly.
@michaelb I’m relatively certain that we’ve never actually ordered a new manual focus spring before this. I’ve considered bringing it up a few times (as it was somewhat damaged/stretched/ect) but it was always close enough to properly focusing (within a few fractions of a mm) with just some manual adjustments to the spring that I never bothered. We’re unlikely to have any extras and will need to order some.
Sounds good. It looked like the autofocus wasn’t involved in the crash, the member had a small part and thought the red dot signified where the autofocus was, so the actual probe would have been well out of the way.
The focus spring was definitely bent beyond just being bent back, it had stretched about a mm even when I tried to straighten it.
Right, no, I get that. The issue is that A) first off, the person should have been taught not to use autofocus on something that small, but 2) if the head was able to crash into the table, it means that the autofocus plunger went into the gaps in the vector grid table, and when it came back out it might have gotten caught and damaged itself. Either way it’s almost definitely out of calibration, because ‘plunger missed the material and went into the grid’ was what caused both previous problems with the autofocus in the past. The first time it just knocked it out of calibration, the second time it ripped the plunger out of the machine entirely and took the autofocus system down for a whole month while we ordered in a new piece.
I’ll need to check the autofocus calibration once I’m back up there to make sure it’s not out of alignment, but given that it crashed the head it probably is, and without a manual focus there’s no good way to get the system into focus, is what I’m getting at.
I’ve got absolutely no problem marking the machine as down. I wanted to actually, but figured I hadn’t been around enough and didn’t have a solid enough reason to do so. It definitely needs some attention.
Fwiw, when the crash happened the flat engraving table was on it, and the part it crashed into was about an inch tall (a dreidel), I checked the autofocus head while the head was still jammed up and it wasn’t in harm’s way. But that’s not to say it shouldn’t be checked again.
I used the machine yesterday and the autofocus is working fine. I didn’t see any indication that anything was out of whack.
The manual focus spring is clearly shot.