TL;DR: My 1.6 W laser, when running auto focus, was trying to engrave the focus pattern from way too high, leaving no mark on the material. I realized that the laser height on the start screen said: 79 mm - I remembered from the last job that it was 28 mm. So I went into settings, Laser, Adjust Laser height, and set it to 28 mm manually,. After that, auto focus was successful. Did it twice to double check, but both times the focus procedure succeeded and delivered consistent values.
How did this happen? OK, here’s the long story, including my worries with the current 1.15.21 firmware:
I did a 1.6 W laser job yesterday, and needed another one today. For whatever reason, I checked the firmware if perchance an update would be available. My current version was 1.15.21_20230310 - OTA-update said. There’s a newer version: 1.15.21_20230303 - I was sceptical… 10 is higher than 03… However, I decided to to the update. After that, the laser autofocus was broken as described above. Me was angry at myself for “downgrading” against better judgement, and with Snapmaker for offering an older version over the air. Went into forum, looked at what is the current firmware, found the relevant post: Snapmaker 2.0 Firmware Updates and Downloads - #27 by Alan - which says: “March 10…” → Thinketh me: that’s 20230310 - back to where I came from, fine. Put it on the USB stick, updated from there… Now I have 1.15.21_20230309! What a chaos!!! Even more disappointed that auto focus still was faulty, but then came up with the solution above… Fine…
Dear Snapmaker team, please, please please: Give the firmware a thorough checkup, and then - please, please, please - test it thoroughly with all possible combinations of old and new linear modules, old and new 3DP head, old and new laser head and with the milling head! It is so! frustrating when your established workflows suddenly have issues…
Thank you very much!