Variable or selectable Parkposition for improved accessibility

Hi,

A proposal for a new or modified function. Reaching the Modules through the side door is rather hard, because it parks in the other side.

Can you make the Parkposition variable or at least selectable between different (min 2) options?

I like this suggestion, but just to let you know what I do, I just turn on the machine, home, move to where I want it for ease of swapping, then turn off. Or if finishing a print for the night and I know I want to laser tomorrow, jog there before shutting down for the night. You get the picture. Manually do what you’re talking about. :wink:

Yeah, it’s a few annoying extra steps but so is swapping out the heads to begin with (and you ALWAYS want power off when unplugging heads - and you ALWAYS want to be careful with plug orientation when doing so because despite that little ‘clip’ the wires themselves are not clocked for protection at all - it is reversible in fit if not in function and intention - don’t let the magic smoke out!).

I’m a bit more interested lately in whether after lasering (with the 10W laser) the machine should really ‘raise’ to the max height and sit centered. I’m noticing what I think is some heat sag in my enclosure top panel, that just so happens to be in a very small ring centered where the laser head parks after a job. If that head is pretty hot after a fairly long laser session and that fan is forcing the air right at the enclosure top for a while… hmmm…

Kind of hard to get a photo of - you see more the distortion of the rail behind it than the ripple in the panel itself. (The darker circle to the ‘right’ of the distortion is just a reflection of an upward-facing gooseneck LED lamp I was using for some indirect light on the panel top, and the machine is obviously currently configured for printing.)

Haven’t thought about the swapping process at all :thinking: for this purpose, your solution will work.

My idea came when I wanted to change the filament. I think there are several further manual process that would be improved by a flexible parking position.

Your photo is also interesting. Could be solved with a different parking position especially for lasering. Haven’t tried my laser, therefore not sure about how it’s working. But could you modify the end of each gcode used for lasering, to move the head to a lower position?

The premium variant would be if the parking position would be depending on the last z-position and would raise it only with respect to this.