Odd Snapmark Behavior

Community Support
1

I am working on a large chess set. I already cut two parts of what will be the King. The model is 33" tall, so uses three cut sessions per piece, with snapmarks to ensure a proper joint.

The first two pieces worked flawlessly. The third piece was designed from the same template (snapmark layout carried through, only the model to be cut changes). First cut pass was fine (no snapmarks used), second one worked without a hitch (lines up to snapmarks, and places final set for last pass), but on the third set of snapmarks it is messing up the same way consistently:

I press the button to align to snapmarks, the head moves to the first fiducial, fires the red light, then moves to the second fiducial. Here it does NOT fire the red light, and it then moves back to “home” like it thinks itself to still be on the first fiducial (so winds up on the top of the 12" span, but in the middle of the 20" span instead of in the corner top left).

There is no message on computer screen, no “Snapmarks worked, press the button!” and no aligning of the cut to the fiducials. It just goes back to normal display prior to me having pressed the Snapmark button.

If I press the align to snapmarks again, it acts like it THINKS it is at the home position (so will crash the carriage against the far right).

I turned the machine off to re-calibrate, moved the fiducials lower (away from the far edge) and tried again. Same result. I tried this three times.

I decided that maybe the second snapmark wasn’t dark enough, so I went back to the second job to re-align to initial snapmarks and score them once more to darken the fiducial. However, I accidentally left the original snapmarks too high, and so it aligned to the BOTTOM snapmarks (the pair giving me problems earlier)… the big issue is that this time the snapmark alignment WORKS.

I went ahead and darkened the fiducials anyway. I returned to my proper third cut, and align to snapmarks failed in exactly the same way again. No error message, no align message, and improper return of the print head.

2

King Z-1-3.zip (69.4 KB)

This is the file which is failing to proper align. I tried to run the cut on a second machine, and while the other machine does manage to return to proper home position, it does NOT give me a “go ahead and print” message, snapmarks attempt, then fail with no message.

Here is the file which cuts before the problem file:

King Z-1-2.zip (69.2 KB)

(Both files are SVG, not sure if they upload directly or not, they aren’t showing in the preview)

EDIT: Re-uploaded as zips.

3

It’s best to zip them, so the forum software doesn’t strip anything out.

4

I believe I have this figured out. It has been happening more, and very inconsistently. Sometimes I move the piece up or down and it works, sometimes I swap to another machine and it works.

I believe the issue is the material being warped/bowed, causing the height of the snapmarks to be off from the material height entered, and so the machine reads the positions wrong or something. I have had consistent luck lately with applying magnets to pull the material down when the snapmarks fail and then getting success.

1 Like
5

I think you’d have better luck splitting that into segments that are under 10 inches tall. With the snapmarks falling outside of that ten inch range, the odds of it not being visible by the lid camera go way up. (And the warpage might be contributing as well.)

6

Thanks for letting us know about this, @jacobturner. I’m sorry you ran into trouble. The Snapmark feature is still in beta, so the support team can’t help with troubleshooting yet, but you can receive support here: Introducing Snapmark (September 2018).