A few weeks ago i spent the weekend burning. GF worked all day saturday and then all day sunday.
The only incident which has occured is a matterial height issue which cause a bump and laser arm to jump. I corrected the issue, and the GF finished that print, and then went on to do two more prints. On the next print, i added the material, closed the lid - now the print head/carriage wont home/center and is very jerky.
Turning on in home position : cant find printer head error
Turning on in top left position : GF bump error.
All my cables are good & so are their connection.
The wifi is good
The belt is good, good tension, no broken or missing teeth.
The stepper motors are good, as are the pullies.
The printerhead white cable & white ribbon are good.
The carriage track is good
When looking at the carriage itself, the 4 wheels seem to have a different amount of “wiggle” to them. Is this normal / how much is “normal” wiggle? Is there a way to tighten the wheels to reduce wiggle but still freespin.
I have gone through support already, and my error log shows an issue with my L/R movement with the carriage. But pictures illude that nothing is wrong and support cant judge the “wiggle” as there is no way for me to test/measure it against specs without sending the whole GF in for repair.
Before i get a new carriage, or opt for refurbish - wanted to put to the community for thoughts/ideas as I know centering/homing is a known and frequent issue
That is interesting. How repeatable is this? If you try and have the arm all the way forward and print head in the middle and then turn it on, do you still get an error?
No they arent. Home is the center so the camera can see the GF logo. It is a startup test to verify the movement, carriage, laser head, and camera.
Top left is a “out of the way” position because you can only move the laser arm when turned off, and if after homing, it goes to that location - its out of the way otherwise it would remain in the way.
Home is actually the upper left and the center is called center. At least that’s what I have seen the spots get referred to in the logs and from staff.
But I get what you mean. Try some other spots and see if it still has the issue.
I have read many times about moving the head to the middle of the machine. In 5 years I have never needed to do that. Only once did I ever had an issue with the machine finding the head, and it was covered in debris from engraving - I just wiped my thumb over it and all was well again.
Now when I clean the optics and the rails with a wipe, I also do the lid of the head. About twice a year.
My new refurb replacement has been needing it every 10 or so power ons. But before that, I only ever had to start in the center once and it was because my machine kept trying to move the arm backwards when powering it on.
Idk if it’s just me but I feel like it use to not be common to need to do.
A few years ago it used to be needed by a lot of folks for just about every power on scenario. Then they fixed it and it was a rarity (& usually related to dirty logo or camera lens). I had to do it all the time for several months but haven’t needed to in a few years.
Now it’s popping up again but seems more as a suggestion for problem resolution and not so much because it is an actual solution.