KSA FAB LAB > Laser Cutters

Troubleshooting the Laser Cutters

This document describes some commonly-encountered problems with the laser cutters, and how to resolve them.

General Problems

The laser cutter receives your job, but doesn't do anything when you press "Go" or "Start".

This is typically caused by incorrectly specifying line color or line width. All lines should have their color set explicitly (rather than reyling on AutoCAD's "ByLayer" setting). Additionally, line thickness should be set according to the following rubric:

Software	Line Thickness
AutoCAD	"0.00" thickness
Adobe Freehand	"0" stroke (not hairline)
Adobe Illustrator	"0.1 pt" stroke
Rhino 4	"hairline" thickness

The laser cutter does not cut through your material

If the laser does not cut through using the recommeded settings for that material, the first thing to check is that the laser is properly focused. If the line being produced is more than a hairline in thickness, the focus is off and it will be very difficult to cut through your material.

If the laser is correctly focused, then the optics are most likely dirty. If you file a problem report on the laser cutter, we will clean the optics as soon as we can. In the meantime, you can adjust your settings. The first thing to try is to slow the laser cutter down - for example, if the settings sheet calls for 15% speed, try 13% speed. Changing the cut speed can be far more effective than increasing the laser power. You can also try increasing the laser frequency or PPI settings, which will cause the laser to fire more often as it travels over your material. Increasing laser power should be the last setting you adjust in this case.

ULS-Specific Problems

The laser cutter does not receive your job

If the laser cutter never indicates that it has received your job, check the print queue from your computer. If your job is sitting in the queue, not moving, then most likely the laser cutter has lost connection with the computer. Your two options are to:
1> unplug and re-plug the silver USB cable that connects the laser cutter.
2> completely shut down and re-start both the laser cutter and the computer.

The laser cutter shows an incorrect page size in AutoCAD

The most commonly-seen wrong page sizes in AutoCAD are 0" by 0", and 140"+ by under 1". Each of these problems indicates that you are not printing to a .pc3 file, but directly to the laser cutter. The solution is review the document "Using the Laser Cutter: AutoCAD" in the laser cutter tutorial on this site, and follow its instructions. We have been told by Universal Laser that the only way to consistently use the laser cutter from AutoCAD is to follow that document's instructions.

Epilog-Specific Problems