Yearly engraving update of plaque

[Darrin Davis]

I am needing to update a plate that goes on a golf trophy where the winning team takes the trophy home to their club each year. I'm needing to engrave the winner of the 2016 matches but do not know exactly how to add the team and year to make it line up perfectly. I didn't used the top, left corner of my bed as reference as I should have. With that said, do any of you guys have the magical knowledge and could help me figure out how to line this up? The pictures show the vector file that I will be engraving and the print properties from my laser. It is a Mercury III from GCC 25 watt. Thanks.
336047336048

[Bruce Volden]

This is where I would use painters tape and "sneak" up on exact placement. I don't know if you're burning into wood or metal plate but once you nail the placement just burn through the tape.

Bruce

[Braden Todd]

I'd measure the outline of the plate, lay down paper on the laser bed (tape it down) cut the outline out and then lay the plaque in the hole/jig.

[Mark Sipes]

Darrin did you engrave the first plate?? "I didn't used the top, left corner of my bed as reference as I should have. With that said,"

Can you match the plate????


.

[Kev Williams]

grab a set of these--

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/calipers.jpg

Measure from the left edge of the plate to the left edge of the text, put a guideline at that distance from the left edge of the plate...
measure from the top of the plate to the baselines of the bottom 2 lines of text, subtract line 2 from line 3, then add the difference to line 3's measurement, and put a guideline at that distance from the top of the plate...

Now you have new top-left ref points to start the new text. You may want to verify your machine is actually engraving where you tell it to first! (unless you know that it is :) )

[Ross Moshinsky]

1. Engrave a brand new plate.

2. Do your best and move on. What are they paying you? $15? If they want it to line up perfectly every year, they should bring it back to the same place every year. To get it "perfect" takes testing and time. $15 doesn't cover that.

[Bruce Clumpner]

Cheap enough just to replace the whole plate, save the time and effort trying to line things up... Start fresh!

[AL Ursich]

New plate every year... Less STRESS...