Category: Machine Shop

Continuing the experiments on Y axis wobbling produced this shaky engraving:

The rectangle is 30×10 mm, with lines spaced 0.25 mm apart to simplify estimating distances (although I also have a measuring magnifier) and run at 100 mm/s to simplify converting distance to time. The lines alternate in direction, beginning with a left-to-right line at the bottom (which is bar-straight from the initial positioning move). The wobbles occur at the start of each line.

A closer look with blown contrast:

The maximum error in the Y axis direction looks like 0.12 mm and damps out after 3 cycles. Each cycle covers 2.8 mm = 28 ms = 35 Hz.

The LightBurn Preview shows a 1.5 mm overscan distance and extrapolating the wobbulations leftward suggests the gantry starts the scan line with an overshoot due to the Y axis motion. The cycle-to-cycle damping is about 50%, so the initial overshoot (invisible in the overscan region) might be 0.25 mm, agreeing reasonably well with the 0.2 mm seen while cutting small squares.

The results above come from these settings:

• Layer speed: 100 mm/s
• Line interval: 0.25 mm
• Y acceleration: 2000 mm/s²
• Y start speed: 20 mm/s

I then made single-variable changes to the Engraving Parameters settings:

Line shift speed

• 500 mm/s
• 10 mm/s

Y Acceleration

• 200 mm/s²

Y start speed

• 30 mm/s

Today I Learned: The Y Start Speed (in mm/s) for engraving is capped by the Y Axis Jumpoff Speed (in mm/s², so perhaps the maximum change in speed), which is, in turn, capped at 80 mm/s.

Each of the variations produced a result visually indistinguishable from the image you see above: the error magnitude and oscillation frequency were identical.

One possible reason: None of those settings have any effect, because LightBurn doesn’t do whatever the Ruida controller defines as Engraving. However, changing both the Y start speed and the Jumpoff speed should have made at least a little change to the results and did not.

Another possible reason: Each 0.25 mm Y axis change requires 20.8 motor steps (either 20 or 21 at 12 µm/step), so the fancy tweaks lack space to take effect, the motor thumps 20-ish steps, and the gantry shakes the same way every time.

The closer you look, the worse it gets …

Experimenting with little squares showed the Y axis has a definite wobble:

Which suggested a simple test:

I adjusted the laser power to compensate for the speed, with the result being a line burned into white cardboard. The lines are a bit under 0.2 mm wide, roughly the width of the focused spot.

The controller settings for the X and Y axes:

The acceleration values may be affected by the limits in this section:

Assuming the Y axis acceleration is 3000 mm/s², the RepRap calculator shows the Y axis speeds within the 30 mm distance along the vertical sides:

The first column in the test results shows perfectly square corners have no problem at any speed, because the controller decelerates to nearly a stop before changing direction.

Rounding the corner to 0.5 mm introduces a distinct wobble in the Y axis that doesn’t change much, probably because the controller still decelerates as it approaches the corner.

The 1 mm radius corners show a distinct overshoot at all speeds. The peak overshoot doesn’t change much between 250 and 500 mm/s, because the RepRap calculator shows the machine barely reaches 250 mm/s by the middle of the side, so 500 mm/s isn’t any faster.

The first overshoot is about 0.2 mm, the first undershoot is a little over 0.1 mm, and the rest are barely visible.

The 2 and 4 mm radius corners have barely visible wobbles. Whether that is due to the head not flexing as much due to the lower acceleration around the larger radius I cannot say.

The machine may not follow the simple RepRap acceleration profile when approaching a corner, let alone a rounded corner.

I think attempting to reduce the overshoot by fiddling with the belt tension / hardware fasteners / whatever will be unavailing. The laser head runs on a linear rail along the gantry with plenty of unbalanced mass hanging off the bottom:

Moving the beam 0.2 mm on the platform by pivoting around the rail 6 inch = 150 mm above amounts to only 0.08°, far less than anything I can measure while adjusting the mechanics.

Slowing down doesn’t help nearly as much as I expected and rounding the corners makes it worse.

Word has it that much spendier machines behave better, which is both comforting and unhelpful.