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Ken Smith Jr
05-14-2013, 6:57 AM
Morning all,
I've been messing around with trying to get my rotary fixture to agree to engrave properly (haha)! Anyway, I need newbie help as I'm pretty much lost in trying to get this fixture to engrave properly, I am using Draw 12. So far I think it's 3 things from what I can tell, software, operator error (ME!) or both. I'm completely lost on what the heck "Circle Pulse" is and what it's for, as messing around this changes a whole bunch of stuff in regards to how the graphic lays out. Right now I am lost and ready to start from the beginning again! Any help to ease my pain would be welcomed!!! Thank you!!

john banks
05-14-2013, 8:41 AM
In RDCAM 5 I think our circle pulse is set to 24200, then you can select the diameter or circumference of the object and the engraving should be scaled correctly. Just play with it and try to engrave something of a certain height and measure it on the item (like an old wine bottle to test). We did the testing and setup and never used the rotary again!

Ken Smith Jr
05-14-2013, 9:06 AM
Thank you for the reply John. Sigh...... that didn't work, I have the artwork in Draw to actual size of what I am putting onto the dia. of the part, set the dia. in the software of the part and tried the 24200, but it's a no go!! I would do the same and just toss the fixture aside but I do have a few jobs that I can use it for and maybe two more in the future. Again thank you John!

john banks
05-14-2013, 11:50 AM
Need to derive your own figure then by fixing the variables you know and then testing. If you have a few examples of the circle pulse, the intended size and the actual size it should be easy to work out, assuming you have the diameter entered correctly. I think we used a wine bottle and sauce jar of different dimensions to get it right, but there was also a little bit of slip on our system too so if you vectored at a decent speed it would lose positional accuracy.

Ken Smith Jr
05-14-2013, 12:29 PM
John, again thank you! Well I've been doing that for almost 2 days, I figured there was some kind of mathematical sum or function to come up with what number to put into the "circle pulse" box. I've gotten close but had to almost triple the dia. size and input random numbers into the "circle" to get anything even close to being correct! Haha, I'm, at this point, not even concerned about accuracy as I'm just trying to understand how to get from point A to point B and have something I can engrave upon! Thank you John, I hope to figure this out eventually!!

john banks
05-15-2013, 4:23 PM
John, again thank you! Well I've been doing that for almost 2 days, I figured there was some kind of mathematical sum or function to come up with what number to put into the "circle pulse" box. I've gotten close but had to almost triple the dia. size and input random numbers into the "circle" to get anything even close to being correct! Haha, I'm, at this point, not even concerned about accuracy as I'm just trying to understand how to get from point A to point B and have something I can engrave upon! Thank you John, I hope to figure this out eventually!!
Can you give some examples of the data points you have? There is no reason that this should not be a simple linear equation, but when you are deep in a problem it may be difficult to see the wood from the trees.

Ken Smith Jr
05-16-2013, 7:27 AM
Hi John,
I guess I should explain myself clearer as it's not too big of a problem to engrave something on glass etc.(Yet!) I can fudge around with getting something like that going within a reasonable amount of time. It seems to me that even though you size the graphic in Draw, when putting it over into the Laserworks then to the engraver everything changes. (So far everything is like at least 4 times bigger with the correct diameter imputed) I have a graduated dial job that I am trying to get running with the fixture. anodized aluminum, .5" (Engraving surface) X 3.86" Dia. I have it laid out in Draw a total of 12.1265" once in Laserworks all logic get's thrown out it seems. I've been trying to get someone from tech support (China?),which is now a series of phone tag back and forth due to timezones, as I feel (Could be wrong, haha) that there should be some kind of mathematical figure, solution or function to be able to throw something on the fixture and without spending time doing hit or miss set up to engrave something! (Gosh, I hope I'm not wrong about that!) I should have some time yet today to mess around with the fixture and settings as I had to take myself away from it for a couple days! Thank you!!

john banks
05-16-2013, 7:43 AM
Please simplify it for me (and I think you ;) ) and give me the following five numbers:

What is the height of the image in Draw?

What is the height of the image in Laserworks? (should be the same)

What is the height of the image on the item?

What is the circle pulse?

What is the diameter (or circumference) of the object?

What is the diameter (or circumference) you have in Laserworks? (should be the same)

Ken Smith Jr
05-16-2013, 9:42 AM
What is the height of the image in Draw? – 12.127” – (308.0258mm)

What is the height of the image in Laserworks? (should be the same) It is, shows 308.00mm X 10.262mm

What is the height of the image on the item? - 10.2mm (To fit / engrave on the .5” dial)

What is the circle pulse? - Right now, set at 25000, go to preview and the width says 10.3mm X 149.6mm

What is the diameter (or circumference) of the object? - 98.3mm

What is the diameter (or circumference) you have in Laserworks? (should be the same) – yes 98.3mm


Additional "circle pulse" settings:


25000cp = 149.6mm in preview mode



50000cp = 299.2mm in preview mode


51000cp = 305.2mm in preview mode


52000cp = 311.2mm in preview mode



Ive had a couple of CAD / engineering guys here messing around with it on Monday for a couple hours and they were defeated, dejected and just walked away, haha!!
Attached the print of the dial, maybe a visual will help??? Thank you for taking the time!!!

262385

john banks
05-16-2013, 3:30 PM
>What is the height of the image in Draw? – 12.127” – (308.0258mm)
>What is the height of the image in Laserworks? (should be the same) It is, shows 308.00mm X 10.262mm
When I was asking height I mean the y dimension, the axis on which you are using a motor for the rotary attachment. Can I assume that 10.262mm is the width and the x dimension and we can ignore this as it is not a variable we're discussing.
>What is the height of the image on the item? - 10.2mm (To fit / engrave on the .5” dial)
Something is wrong here. I don't want to discuss the x-axis, but the y axis. I am asking what the actual size is on the object when you attempt to engrave it using your settings.
>What is the circle pulse? - Right now, set at 25000, go to preview and the width says 10.3mm X 149.6mm
I am not worried by what previews say, just the actual size on a a real object.
What is the diameter (or circumference) of the object? - 98.3mm
What is the diameter (or circumference) you have in Laserworks? (should be the same) – yes 98.3mm
>I think we're good on these last two.
If you cannot sacrifice an object of about 98.3mm diameter to test on then find something you can test on, setting the diameter to what the actual object is, then engrave something with a y axis dimension of say 20mm on your screen and tell me what size it comes out with on your test piece. If it comes out at 37.2mm height then you know you need to adjust your circle pulse by multiplying it by 37.2/20, if it gets bigger when you do this then you needed to multiply the original circle pulse by 20/37.2.
There is nothing magical about using the rotary axis, it is just a motor that is usually the same or similar to that driving your usual axes but through gearing or roller size it moves a different distance which needs correction by the circle pulse setting.
The crucial bit of info we are missing to work this out is that combination of intended vs actual height.
Once you scale it properly, your further problem is slip and accuracy, related to mounting your narrow piece, but you need to be able to get say a 20mm square in your software predictably being 20mm on a real wine bottle label first.

Ken Smith Jr
05-17-2013, 8:07 AM
I'll start off easy, wine bottle, 2" square in Draw, Laserworks enter 84.6mm dia., CP at 22500, square is 2" on X and 2.874" on the Y, almost across half the glass, drop the CP to 10,000, X=2" Y= little less than 1.5", 13650 CP gives me a 2" square on a 84.6mm Dia. I do appreciate the time and the help, thank you John!!

john banks
05-17-2013, 9:05 AM
So 13650 sounds to be spot on for circle pulse if the measurement was exactly 2" on the Y and that is what you intended. You've got a slight curve on the bottle of course so you'd need to consider whether you are measuring 2" around the circumference of the bottle or the shorter point to point distance with calipers. Sounds like you need precision with your marking, so what are you doing to stop it slipping?

Ken Smith Jr
05-17-2013, 9:36 AM
Okay, baby steps, haha, check my math, I want a image to be 50.8mm X 50.8mm, I throw a random number in for the CP and run a test piece, say the test piece came out to be 75.0mm X 50.8, I would then take 75.0 divided by 50.8 = 1.476, I would then take that number and multiply it by what number I have entered into the CP and that "should" be the correct number to enter into the CP to achieve a 50.8 square, correct?
I used calipers to measure the wine bottle, how do I determine slippage and if so how do I fix that? Is it common with this fixture? I've ran a rotary fixture from the early to mid 90's off and old ULS machine, which wasn't too bad, the set up was pretty primitive though, haha. Lets discuss slippage!!!

john banks
05-17-2013, 11:17 AM
I detected slip by noticing that the position my wine bottle returned to was not where it started. I think our rollers maybe lift the piece up when going in one direction on the y axis and then push it down giving more friction in the other, a bit like a front wheel drive having more traction whilst reversing ;)

If we use the convention x by y for sizes, then if you wanted 50.8 x 50.8 and you got 50.8 x 75.0 then the correction would be 1.476 agreed. You would take the circle pulse and divide it by 1.476 because as you showed in post #11, smaller values for circle pulse produce smaller sizes on the piece.

Khalid Nazim
05-20-2013, 3:57 PM
Ken,

I have never used the "rotary engrave" option in the output tab on RDCAM for using my rotary device (chuck type). I have used the method described here (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?178104-How-to-attach-rotary-attachment-to-Shenhui-machine) very successfully. In fact, I recall having a discussion with Shenhui Tech support and they specifically mentioned not using the enable rotary engrave option and agreed with the method described in the link.

I hope this helps.

Regards
Khalid

Ken Smith Jr
05-22-2013, 11:19 AM
Sorry, I got busy all of a sudden!! Thank you for the information as I haven't had time to mess with the fixture this week. I will definitely work on getting this to work, again thank you and thanks a ton to John for your help and time!!

Hermes Sandoval
05-22-2013, 12:19 PM
I've been struggling with the exact same problem, I tried to reverse engineer it by engraving a 20mm long square into a cylinder then calculate the difference and it worked, for once. The same ratio doesn't seem to work for every diameter and the formula in the help section of laserworks doesnt seem to help, the translation from chinese to english seems quite sketchy. I tried to solve this equation by comparing medians in different diameters but I still haven't been able to stablish a pattern.

Will keep you posted.

Hermes Sandoval.

Morning all,
I've been messing around with trying to get my rotary fixture to agree to engrave properly (haha)! Anyway, I need newbie help as I'm pretty much lost in trying to get this fixture to engrave properly, I am using Draw 12. So far I think it's 3 things from what I can tell, software, operator error (ME!) or both. I'm completely lost on what the heck "Circle Pulse" is and what it's for, as messing around this changes a whole bunch of stuff in regards to how the graphic lays out. Right now I am lost and ready to start from the beginning again! Any help to ease my pain would be welcomed!!! Thank you!!

Ken Smith Jr
05-22-2013, 1:00 PM
Yes, agree, I did the 2 inch square, thinking there was a functional, mathematical way to input the correct number when changing to a different size part, it did get me close but still had to "guess" at a number either higher or lower to get it close. Soon as I get some free time I will be working on figuring something out I can live with. I'll keep an eye open for further updates. Thank you!!

jordan matthai
07-08-2013, 2:38 PM
Hey Ken, did you ever have any luck with this? I'm working on engraving on drinking glasses and am having trouble getting it setup. Any help would be appreciated.

Ken Smith Jr
07-09-2013, 7:51 AM
Morning, whew!! Yes I did get it to function and I got super busy as I was going to update my progress!! I did what was described here
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?178104-How-to-attach-rotary-attachment-to-Shenhui-machine
now what that did was zero me in pretty good with my image, I don't think I changed the Circle Pulse, but did leave the rotary check box checked. As far as the back lash issue there was a setting in the "user" tab and for the life of me I don't know which one it was, maybe home speed or something like that, I cranked it way down maybe like to 5% or something so it would not "jump" back to the home spot so darn fast.(So fast it would never be where you actually started, so if you wanted to run something twice you wouldn't be able to do it as it never went back to the actual "start" position) Sorry I can't remember which one, but you can mess with the settings to experiment, just don't forget what you changed and from what changed. I had my image scaled to size, which I myself couldn't get it to work properly, so I rescaled my original image a little larger, ran samples till I hit my mark perfectly, now the downside for me was I had everything tweaked right on as I was doing a graduated cylinder so the degree marks had to be perfect, which I finally got it, but for some reason I couldn't get a "clean" white-ish mark on red anodized, just wouldn't cut through it no matter what settings I had. At that point I had scrap issues along with time issues and had to tear the job down and run them manually on my YAG. I did set it up for a titanium job to engrave a line "around" the part with Cermark and that worked awesome. I haven't used the fixture since but I did leave all the settings alone. As soon as I get any time I plan on using it and testing it out on different objects. The original artwork, by resizing it a little bigger seem to accomplish and make up for the rotary settings for me. I wish I could be of more help!! Good luck as it really shouldn't be this complicated to get something like this to run half-way decent!!