Granite banding /striping help!

[Ed Mihalack]

This is what I'm getting in all settings I cleaned all the bearings and did the maintenance according to the manual. GGRRRRRRRRRR. I needed this done yesterday. ULS VersaLaser 30 Watt

[Frank Corker]

Jeepers that's extremely poor picture. It looks over cooked too. If it were an epilog I would be suggesting that you clean the encoder strip but not aware of what the equivilant is for your Universal. Also from what I can see the picture most certainly didn't have the background removed .

[Ed Mihalack]

It's a scrap piece I used to try and fix the problem. It's not the finished piece. This started striping started today everything was perfect yesteday.
Ed

[Ed Mihalack]

My concern is the dark stripes on the marines face.

[Frank Corker]

I did gather that it was a piece of scrap.

[Scott Shepherd]

Not sure what's causing it, but if you needed it yesterday, you might consider engraving it and filling with oil based white paint to even it out. Not the best answer, but if you're in a pinch, you have to improvise.

[Frank Corker]

Ed are you getting the banding on any other graphics or just this one?

[Ed Mihalack]

I'm getting this on everything. Even good stuff from yesterday is doing this today.

[Ed Mihalack]

I've never done fill before. I was always happy with the results till now But I going to the shop to see if that will work.
Thanks Scott

[Dan Hintz]

Rotate the image 90 degrees and try it again. If the stripes are in the same direction in terms of the image (from left of image to right of image), the problem is in the image processing. If the striping is in the same direction on the table, it's a driver/hardware issue. Let's narrow it down to those two first.

[Ed Mihalack]

I rotated the image 90 degrees and the stripes remain the same direction (horizontal).

[Brian Jacobs]

Ed, did you check the z-axis settings checkbox? A couple months ago, my Versa was doing the same thing. Found out in the System tab that the 'Auto Z' checkbox was 'magically' unchecked. End result was--- I had the correct depth, but the table did not move to the correct offset. A focus offset of 1/4" (or so) will cause banding.

[Ed Mihalack]

I changed the dithering in the Versa controls from Halftone to black & white and that helped, but I'm still not happy yet. I'll give it a try in the morning. I've Spent 12 hours on this already The Marine whose plaque I'm engraving died in Vietnam, and I owe it to him to get it right.
Thanks Brian.

[Brian Jacobs]

I very much understand and good luck. Halftone to b&w should help. Also, if you have 1-touch, might want to try that.

[Kevin L. Waldron]

Check with Universal Tech, but I think that you have bad tube. I have two Universals and had something similar and tubes were going bad.

Kevin

[Dan Hintz]

Ironically enough, I just did a piece of marble this evening and had a bit of banding. Not really my week/month.

[Ed Mihalack]

As Jackson departed from the Grand Jury room, a small
boy clutched at his sleeve and tagged along after him.
"Say it ain't so, Joe," he pleaded. "Say it ain't so."

[Ed Mihalack]

I think you'll find that most of the tubes failing after a year or two are cheap glass tubes from Asia. The higher quality RF units do still fail from time to time, but that's usually due to a failed RF board (also often easily repaired by someone skilled with a soldering iron).


Dan,
My Universal VersaLaser stopped firing abruptly. This after it started striping rather abruptly 4 days ago. Thank you for responding to that post. I am skilled with a soldering iron (retired shop teacher) Universal Tech Support doesn't open till Monday. Anyway I can check the RF board while I am waiting.
Ed