VLS6.60 head/ruler alignment

[Glen Monaghan]

I was looking at a Universal VLS6.60 today and noticed that the guy demonstrating it wasn't using the rulers to position the test substrate. When I asked why not, he said that the rulers didn't line up with the engraving area (i.e., if you tried to draw a 1" square starting at 1,1 in CorelDraw and engrave it, you'd find the top left corner of the square wasn't engraved at 1,1... He claimed that there wasn't any way to adjust/calibrate/reset the head or to reposition/align the rulers ??? I was just reading through the manual and found no mention of any such capability.

Anybody know if there is a way to get the rulers and head in sync on these machines?

[Ross Moshinsky]

You can't draw a 1x1 square in the corner. The ULS software automatically bumps it off the edge. You can draw a series of lines and manually adjust the rulers by loosening the screws on the rulers. It's not very complicated.

[Kev Williams]

My LS900 only requires that anything to be engraved against any border to be .002" FROM the border. (I'm sure Ross's LS100 is the same way)- for 99.99% of all laser engraving, that's insignificant. I don't know how far the ULS 'bumps', but it can't be too far... and who engraves against the border anyway? Only vector lines hit the borders in normal practice...

As for setting the rulers, I've always done the tape-burn thing-- I move or remove the rulers, put some double-sided paper tape down end to end, straddling the "0" lines on the top and left edges of the table. Then I draw straight lines in Corel starting at 0 left and 0 down... if the machine wont run them, move them in .001" increments until the laser will run them. Cut thru the tape, and put some tic marks on the tape at like 1", 6", 18" etc to line the rulers markings to. Remove the half of the tape that would be under the rulers. Now place the edges of the rulers against the cut edges of the tape, line up the tic marks, and carefully tighten the rulers down.

They're now dead to rights square to the machine,along the machine's actual 0/0 borders, and the rulers markings will be perfect.

And FWIW, I don't know of any western machine that doesn't have the capability of moving its 0/0 origin. It fascinates me that someone demo'ing a new laser would claim there's no way to adjust the rulers or the machine itself....

[Glen Monaghan]

I don't know of any western machine that doesn't have the capability of moving its 0/0 origin. It fascinates me that someone demo'ing a new laser would claim there's no way to adjust the rulers or the machine itself....

I've continued looking through ULS manuals and found one that gave the masking tape alignment procedure and alluded to setting the 0,0 origin but then never elaborated... I haven't found any firmware approach at all!

And the machine was far from new; I've been interested in getting a bigger machine with higher power and this one has been well used in a commercial environment. The demonstrator was the daily operator, not a salesman.

[Kev Williams]

My old 1997 ULS had a funky procedure to change the origin- Actually, there were 2 procedures, one was an 'adjustment from zero', where you could compensate for off-center coordinates. Example, if the machine was centering a 2x2" plate at .98X and .99Y, you could set a new zero at +.02X and +.01Y, and the machine would now engrave at 1" and 1". However, this didn't change the machine's actual zero, it would just move the engraving that much. Great for engraving, but made for complications when red-dot locating, as the compensation didn't extend to the "actual" and red dot coordinates.

And then there was the "hard" origin change procedure, but knowing the secret button-push code to get there was frustrating. I accidentally got to it once, but never could find it on my own after that. My NH rep could never remember it either, but he does have the procedure saved in his notes. Pretty sure it's the same for many of the newer models too. Anyway, I did the ruler/tape thing several times in that machine over the years, that was definitely the easy way!

Glad your demo guy wasn't actually a salesman! :)