Hi, I just received my A150 in the mail this week after waiting 4 months for it to arrive. I ran the initial tests and guides out of the box which turned out well. After that I constantly ran into issues which were fixed after a firmware update to v1.10.1 and reformatting a USB drive to Fat32, I was able to do one test project on it before the laser model completely stopped working.
My issue is that the laser can not auto focus and the camera can not be calibrated. I’m unable to operate the laser model at all in any functioning capacity.
Hasn’t been a definitive solution but have you tried the following:
Unplug and check toolhead cable and hand controller cables and replug (with power off)
All lights off (enclosure, room) so that you’re using only the light from head.
If this doesn’t work then re-install firmware and/or revert to 1.9. (always keeping lights off)
You are using wi-fi for camera capture? It doesn’t work through usb.
-S
Did you lower the laser toolhead to the material you are using properly before starting the auto calibration? For some reason I miss this step out about 1 time out of five.
Yup, I’m doing that as instructed. So auto focus status update:
Laser hood is off.
I’m able to use the laser by manually controlling the laser height to 25.00mm or 25.50mm, it cuts beautifully at that height. Worked on a few projects and it turned out great.
Still the camera is nonoperational and completely useless. So obviously I’m unable to auto focus anymore, but I’m able to just figure it out manually.
New issues:
Now all of a sudden, I have a new issue which is that my Z axis (laser head) is randomly crashing into my table when I go from HOME to WORK ORIGIN (when Z axis: set to 25.50mm). It scrapes the table really bad, like you can see the scratch marks on the table on laser ring / cover thing (removable lens hood is still off).
I’ve turned it off and on, unplugged things, and reset the work coordinates. It hasn’t scrape the table again over the last few resets, so I don’t know what to make of it at this point.
My opinion is that this machine is flawed beyond belief, with glitches and critical errors on the laser alone I wouldn’t recommend this to a friend. BUT when it works, it works so well that I’m happy with the quality of the output and almost forget how many hours I’ve yelled at this thing.
I haven’t even used the CNC or 3D printer yet. I fully expect hours of time and issues to get it working properly, hopefully the output will be worth the constant problems.
The work origin is saved in the controller between power cycles. If you’ve fixed the work origin so it no longer crashes then it’s fine and should continue being fine.
I prefer “very quirky”, as most things are explainable, leading to complicated procedures. The more you understand and learn about the machine the better it will operate, like any complex tool.
Luban / camera / autofocus though, yea that straight up does not work, but does not impact the ability of the machine to be controlled from other software.
The laser focal length is stored in the toolhead.
When starting jobs the work origin is set to the calculated middle of the board from the touchscreen, and stored in the controller as the work origin.
I could imagine a scenario where a ‘go to work origin’ was issued after changing the laser focal length, but without recalculating the origin, that would result in driving the head into the board. To ensure this never happens again, make sure and set the work origin manually after any recalibration or changes to the laser focal length before relying on go to origin.
Ah, that would explain why the autocalibration didn’t work then. When you lower the head to the material with the hood in place, that is used as a reference point to begin calibration. Without the hood it will be starting way too low.
Right! That makes sense but circling back, the camera doesn’t work when I’m auto focusing with the hood or not (system crashes on the processing screen). I suspect that may be the source of the problem rather than the hood.
On the contrary, the official instructions have you remove the hood to avoid crashing the laser into the plate, I think, or something, it’s written really hard to understand.
Section 6.2:
My key takeaway is at the end there’s this blurb:
It technically never said remove the hood before doing the calibration. But how else could you “reininstall” it. Since it’s instructing you to not reinstall afterwards, that’s implying to me that you should remove it in advance.
It does tell you to remove the hood if its not possible to move the head close enough to the bed, the lens itself is adjustable and by default it should be possible to use the laser head with the hood in place.
This from the online manual - I presume that’s what you were referring to:
If the machine recognizes one of the lines on the left as the optimal engraved line, the touchscreen will notify that you should remeasure the focal length. And that you should take off the lens hood before remeasuring the focal length.
Warning: Please do not reinstall the lens hood after measuring the focal length, otherwise the lens hood will run into the materials during the engraving / cutting process.
The Quickstart Guide says to lower on the Z axis until the lens hood just touches.
I genuinely can’t tell if that conflicts with each other but it’s not obvious to me when I read it.
I removed the lens hood permanently and use a different method for calibration now, and just adjust the laser height in the touch screen settings manually. All you need to do is just burn a line and then move the upper down and burn another line to determine if it’s in focus or not. light burn has a handy tool for generating those patterns.
if you have an enclosure, as i recall the magnet sometimes falls away from being able to activate the sensor, and while you are able to choose an option to disable door detection it does not work in all circumstances.
Okay so @brent113 and @albutch , maybe I’m still confused on the laser crashing into the table. I had another crash and here’s what I’m seeing after going HOME then moving to WORK ORIGIN, it will crash into the table again. You can see in the pictures that its very confused on where 28.5mm is. The second picture is after I reboot the machine and it “finds” the proper 28.5mm. I otherwise did not different between boots.
Again the hood is gone.
Both pictures are supposed to be the same exact coordinates.
Theres no enclosure.
Am I just not supposed to go from HOME to WORK ORIGIN? Thanks
The Z and X axes are twisted significantly due to the collision.
Keeping them in contact will damage the linear module and the laser module, so please turn off the power urgently.
I cannot guess the reason why the Z-axis position is indicated below the table.
Why don’t you write down the exact steps you took?
