partial engraving

[Kevin Clark2227]

I have engraved a few things since setting my machine up. I have noticed that regardless of whether I engrave/raster from the top down or bottom up that wherever I start from I get only a partial engrave. The last thing I did today was a piece of acrylic with an arrow at the bottom and 2 lines of text above the arrow. I engraved from the bottom up so it started with the arrow. The head started moving back and forth as normal when I hit 'Go' but no laser then the laser started halfway thru the arrow and did all of the text. Same way with top down. It won't laser the very top of my project but will be fine once the laser does start engraving.

[Mike Null]

Have you positioned the drawing on the table? Is the table size you've specified large enough to fit the drawing?

[Kevin Clark2227]

The project with the arrow was on a 4"X4" piece. All of my text and arrow were within the center 3"X3", so there was about 1" around the entire engraving area to the edge of the piece. Is that what you are asking?

[Mike Null]

No, on most machines the page size is your engraving table. If your table size is too small or your drawing is positioned outside the boundaries of the table that area won't engrave. Some machines use the term "plate size".

You should be able to see a print preview in your drawing software before you send the job to the engraver and after you send the job you should be able to view the engraving as the machine sees it.

[Glen Monaghan]

Does this happen every single time you try to engrave, or just the first time after powering up the laser? It's fairly common for epilogs (at least older ones, don't know about newer models) to not fire immediately on the first job, especially if the machine has been off over a weekend or even over night, so people often put in a scrap of something and burn a square or circle to verify the laser is firing before starting the first job of the day. But, if it's happening every time, there's something else wrong.

-Glen

[Jeff Belany]

I agree with Glen. If it only happens on the first run of the day, it's not too unusual. It happens to my Epilog to. I usually do a small vector in the corner and run a few times until it starts up. I understand you can play with the 'tickle' voltage to avoid this. Call Epilog about this. Mine will usually have no issues after it begins to fire. If it happens every time you start a file then you have other problems. Hope you can straighten it out.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Martin Boekers]

As Mike said, you Corel page size MUST match the page size in the driver.

Glen too had a valid point, I have an older Epilog and I manually fire the laser first thing in the morning then I am ok for the rest of the day.