PDA

View Full Version : Laser Question



George M. Perzel
09-27-2009, 12:45 PM
Hi Gang;
I am not familiar with any of the Universal, Epilog, Trotec, or mainland China laser machines. For those who have one of these can you specify the model and answer the following questions:
1. Can you manually move the laser head (by hand) and position it to where you want to start engraving.?
2. Can you Pause the job, move the head out of the way to inspect the work, and then Resume with the head automatically starting where it left off?
3. What are your available Advance (Starting) positions? For example, my LaserPro has four settings. Home-corresponding to the 0,0 position of the Corel page layout. Relative- sets 0,0 at wherever the head is positioned. Center- wherever the head is positioned corresponds to the graphical center of the image being engraved. Without Home- Head starts position previous job ended (not sure how this is used).
I appreciate your help and sure the info will be useful for many.
Thanks
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

Rodne Gold
09-27-2009, 2:18 PM
Theres also smartcentre
http://www.laserproi.com/en/engr_showcase_detail.php?ID=English_080825014049
works on our spirits

Dave Lock
09-27-2009, 3:38 PM
I have a Chinese Rabbit Laser running LaserCut 5.1

The options are:

Start at the datum and lasing starts at the table co-ordinates where the graphic is on the table.

Starts lasing at the heads current position.

In either case you can choose 9-positions on the graphic to start, i.e. top left, top centre, top left...... centre left, centre, centre right..... etc.

You can pause the engraving at any time but it will continue from the heads current position. To inspect the work you can pause, leave the head where it is, lower the table blah, blah.
However, when rastering a photo, any pause causes a very apparent line in the image. Text and vector graphice don't seem to be affected though.

One nice feature is you can set the number of times to run the job and a delay time between runs, Useful if you want to run multiple items of the same graphic with time to swap out material.

Hope this helps.

Dave.

John Noell
09-27-2009, 11:13 PM
1. Can you manually move the laser head (by hand) and position it to where you want to start engraving.?
YES
2. Can you Pause the job, move the head out of the way to inspect the work, and then Resume with the head automatically starting where it left off?
NO, NOT EXACTLY. There are workarounds but basically, no. (Would be very nice to have!)
3. What are your available Advance (Starting) positions?
0,0 (for table); then for manual placement, 0,0; top-center; left-center; and center-center.

Zvi Grinberg
09-28-2009, 3:46 AM
I will refer to Universal

1. Can you manually move the laser head (by hand) and position it to where you want to start engraving.?

No.
You cannot move the head manually.





However there is much more to it that you can do.

You can move the carriage by mouse or coordinates. In some models you also have front panel controls.
You can Relocate the graphic job, without having to move the carriage.
You can drag the graphics accross the engraving field with the mouse.
Alternately you can define which of nine "hot points" would be the anchor point (four extreme corners, four mid-edges and one for the middle of the graphics). Then you can tell it to move the graphics (corresponding to the "anchor point") by indicating the coordinates, or by "Go To Carriage"
There is "Undo" for all relocations.
One other thing you can do is to Duplicate the graphics in user defineable way.

You indicate how many copies in X and Y you want (relative to current position), and the required gap between them (zero is also an option). The software does everything else.
After duplication you can click on "cells" in this array, and eliminate them.
The software is also smart enough to allow copies only for available space of the engraving field.
2. Can you Pause the job, move the head out of the way to inspect the work, and then Resume with the head automatically starting where it left off?






Yes.

When you pause, the head automatically moves home (extreme upper right). You have free access to the entire engraving field.
Pressing Pause again resumes the job exactly where it paused. The resume (whether raster or vector) is absolutely seemless.
Pressing "Start" would start the job over.
3. What are your available Advance (Starting) positions?

You can define whether or not the head goes back home.
Other than that, I believe that what I explained with Relocate and Duplicate, gives a good picture of the relevant functionality.


I hope I covered it clearly. If further explanation is required, please let me know.

All the best

Zvi

(Disclaimer - I am Universal Lasers distributor in Israel)

John Barton
09-28-2009, 6:28 AM
I will refer to Universal

1. Can you manually move the laser head (by hand) and position it to where you want to start engraving.?

No.
You cannot move the head manually.





However there is much more to it that you can do.

You can move the carriage by mouse or coordinates. In some models you also have front panel controls.
You can Relocate the graphic job, without having to move the carriage.
You can drag the graphics accross the engraving field with the mouse.
Alternately you can define which of nine "hot points" would be the anchor point (four extreme corners, four mid-edges and one for the middle of the graphics). Then you can tell it to move the graphics (corresponding to the "anchor point") by indicating the coordinates, or by "Go To Carriage"
There is "Undo" for all relocations.
One other thing you can do is to Duplicate the graphics in user defineable way.

You indicate how many copies in X and Y you want (relative to current position), and the required gap between them (zero is also an option). The software does everything else.
After duplication you can click on "cells" in this array, and eliminate them.
The software is also smart enough to allow copies only for available space of the engraving field.
2. Can you Pause the job, move the head out of the way to inspect the work, and then Resume with the head automatically starting where it left off?






Yes.

When you pause, the head automatically moves home (extreme upper right). You have free access to the entire engraving field.
Pressing Pause again resumes the job exactly where it paused. The resume (whether raster or vector) is absolutely seemless.
Pressing "Start" would start the job over.
3. What are your available Advance (Starting) positions?

You can define whether or not the head goes back home.
Other than that, I believe that what I explained with Relocate and Duplicate, gives a good picture of the relevant functionality.


I hope I covered it clearly. If further explanation is required, please let me know.

All the best

Zvi

(Disclaimer - I am Universal Lasers distributor in Israel)

sniff, sniff, whine........ I miss my Universal and it's great driver ...... it used to be so nice to know I could put a piece in the machine at a certain point, set up my job at that point on the screen and have the laser zoom right there and start. I miss the precision so much. Such a time saver.



:-(

George M. Perzel
09-29-2009, 9:10 AM
Hi Gang;
Thanks to everyone who provided an input-really interesting how different companies approach this subject.
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

Michael Kowalczyk
09-29-2009, 7:53 PM
Hey George,
Not sure how the new ones are but my vintage 2003 has markers so you can put your start point anywhere and put it in multiple places on your table (AKA plate). then if you like the setting you can save as a plate and recall it if you want to run the same stuff again. I would also send your request to the actual manufactures and see what they come up with. Sometimes there is more than one way to do something, it might be called by another name/process and it may be on our machine already just not taking advantage of it.

Hope this helps a little also and ....