Rotary Attachment

[Curt Heggemeyer]

hello all,
Got a Rabbit laser here 9060 and works great for all that i need done.
Got a rotarty attachment for it the other day and got it all hooked up and put my peice of work in it and I measured the dia. of the work peice and it is 4.75 inches, I designed a test box that size and I imported it and ran the cut to see if the settings are right and the boxes lines all matched up. They did so the settings are right for the attachement. So next I brought in the text I needed to engrave on these peices so should be already to go, well the text is only half as tall as it should be... thought this was very strange indeed so I just highlighted the text in the program and just made it larger by dragging the corner of the text. So try it again, there are 4 lines of text, the bottom line is still small, the next one up the text was a little larger and the 3rd line was the same size, the 4th line was starting to look right 1/2 way through than the text on the remaining portion started to look smashed down.
I can upload a pic if that helps to describe the problem. if I can figure out how to?

I tried restarting the computer, importing the file again. Nothing is working, the text keeps coming out 1/4 to 1/2 the size it is suppose to be but the box I made to test the settings are right.
Could the engrave settings and the cut settings have to be different now? I wouldnt think so because the only thing you need to change is the step amount and it should work either way.

Does anyone have a clue as to what the deal is or any ideas. Or soon there will be a order that needs to be filled if someone has a rotarty attachment that can laser aluminum tubes with Cermark, there is almost 500 of them to do.

[Dan Hintz]

If it's a raster image, what resolution are you printing at? If it's vector, did you calculate the circumference of the object correctly (2πr, or πd)?

[Martin Boekers]

Not knowing how the rotary is set up on you machine, is it possible it could be slipping?

Marty

[Curt Heggemeyer]

I use a round weight in it so the wheels dont slip, that is the first thing I thought of.
The circumferance measurements are right because of the box I did and the top and the bottom lines of the box are actually 1 line so that part of it is right.
The image is a vector and export it as a DXF file as I always have before when I engrave something.
Makes me really scratch my head here

[Martin Boekers]

Did you try to do a vector outline of the boxed area?

if it's only happening with the raster part that may be a clue.


Marty

[Curt Heggemeyer]

Well I did vector of the text and because I have to speed turned up the tube did slip a little but the text size is perfect. So it is a raster problem now... So now what?
It engraves fine on flat objects. Im at a loss on what to do here.
I also tried doing a line of text at a time to see if that works out, well no difference but I did notice that after it engraved 1 line of text the machine rotated it back past the starting point. So if I would have hit start again it would place the new text under the older text instead of on top on it.

Why is this so hard to do?

[Martin Boekers]

I know that Epilog had an issue with the rotary as it "skipped through"
the blank spacing between letters quicker than the doing the raster.

This did cause some slipage, they have corrected that in the driver
so it tracks the same speed whether ther is text or not. It would really jum those space between.

I have never had luck with the Epilog making two passes on the rotary,
it never went back to the exact spot. So one shot and that's it!

I would contact Jim Jaragosky here at the "Creek" as he is our resident
expert on Rabbit lasers.


Marty

[Curt Heggemeyer]

Ok, so Im not alone on the laser not being able to make 2 passes that at least makes me feel better.
What do you use for weight on light weight items? These are a baton like they use in track, hollow aluminum. Is there a company out there that makes rubber sleeves to go over the edges of material so it can go against the rubber wheels of the rotarty attachment and not slip? Like a wide small rubber band, I have been using duct tape but that really cuts into the amount of time it takes to do each one.
I have to get out the air brush now as well so I can Cermark all of these when I get the bug worked out on the laser here.

Thanks

[Martin Boekers]

I only have the two pass trouble with the rotary.

Even with the clamp in position on glasses and steins I only
run one pass.

It always seems to go back past the place it previously started from

I have clients that like a particular glass beer mug, it's not round
but has about 6 segments on it. I use a hose clamp to fit around
the segmented bottom and that helps to round it out.

I'm thinking for you a bicycle inner tube cut into rings might work.

I would slow down your speed and see if that helps.

Marty