New fella here ... fiber laser questions...

[Mike Tiehen]

New guy here.

My son purchased a 30w Chinese fiber laser and is having a great time figuring out the nuances of it.

He's lasered various things around the house just to get a feel for settings, etc.

But he (and I ... and I have many years experience programming CNC, co2 lasers, etc.) is flumoxed by some of the hatch settings (EZCAD2).

It seems that the laser will repeat a hatching process endlessly, without stopping, unless manually stopped.

He's tried a zillion hatch settings and imports, using ezcad to create text and laser directly, imports from Inkscape, Corel, Illustrator, etc.

If he doesn't hatch text, it does what is expected, runs once or as many times the loop is set for.

Add a hatch, and the thing will run til it is manually stopped.

Any ideas.

Thanks and best regards,

Mike Tiehen
Omaha, NE USA

[Nick Hale]

Screen shot of settings? Obviously continuous isn't checked?

[John Lifer]

Yep! I'd bet money Continuous IS checked. (next to Mark F2) button on my version of the software. Mark Selected is useful as well as Show Contour for red lighting image before you engrave.

The manual isn't really that bad. Sit down and read it while working with laser. And Do multiple searches here. Even stuff from 2012 had good info for these things.

[Mike Tiehen]

Screen shot of settings? Obviously continuous isn't checked?

Continuous is not checked.

The only way I could get it to not continuously hatch was to uncheck [] Enable in the hatch dialog for each the three hatch settings.

Which is weird, because I suspected you would have to enable checked to ENABLE it!

379311

Perhaps Enable only means you are enabling "changes", and unchecking it locks the settings?

But when unchecked, the hatching doe strange things ... partially filling the letters.

I'm not sure if he has tried to hatch a vector graphic.

The thing does an amazing job on non-hatched text outlines, with the settings and results doing what he expects.

(Edited to add a screen grab and a few other notes.)

[Isaac Rutten]

Check out these video tutorials. They might help solve your problem. Different program name but the program is identical to EZCAD.

[Kev Williams]

You have 'auto rotate' on--

if your repeat number at the bottom is set for 0---
379387

this MIGHT (I'm not sure) cause it to just keep running your repeating hatch...
2 things:

IF your repeat number is set to 0, try setting it to 1 while still in auto-rotate, see if that does the trick
and/or
un-check auto-rotate and reset the repeats to 0...

I'm curious if either or both work...

[Mike Tiehen]

Great ideas! Thanks! He/we are taking a day off because that machine, as fantastic as it is, just makes us crazy with the nuances of the settings.

We are getting great, repeatable results on anodized alu, and good results on stainless.

Still working on settings for Zytel (fiberglass reinforced nylon). Small changes make a huge difference on the marking on it.

FYI... I use Inkscape and Whisperer on our co2 machines, and found that bitmap graphics traced in Inkscape, saved as .plt files import, display and hatch perfectly in Ezcad! I went round and round with Illustrator, Corel, .dxf, .svg, etc, but when I tried the .plt file, voila!

Thanks for all the help! Great place you have here!

[Bill George]

Great ideas! Thanks! He/we are taking a day off because that machine, as fantastic as it is, just makes us crazy with the nuances of the settings.

We are getting great, repeatable results on anodized alu, and good results on stainless.

Still working on settings for Zytel (fiberglass reinforced nylon). Small changes make a huge difference on the marking on it.

FYI... I use Inkscape and Whisperer on our co2 machines, and found that bitmap graphics traced in Inkscape, saved as .plt files import, display and hatch perfectly in Ezcad! I went round and round with Illustrator, Corel, .dxf, .svg, etc, but when I tried the .plt file, voila!

Thanks for all the help! Great place you have here!

I use and I suspect nearly all here use Corel and I do not have issues Exporting out into EZCad or any other Laser control software. I hope your keeping a Log book on all your settings.

[Mike Tiehen]

I use and I suspect nearly all here use Corel and I do not have issues Exporting out into EZCad or any other Laser control software. I hope your keeping a Log book on all your settings.

George,

I also have Corel, but .dxf exports into Ezcad had lots of crazy hatch errors. The same bitmap art, traced in Inkscape exported as .plt files hatch perfectly and as expected. Windows 7.

We're only logging good results. No good results with Zytel as of yet.

Graphic Designer since 1979. Bought my first Mac in 1984. $3400 (Now a fish tank!). Laserwriter in 1986: $6000. Original Photoshop: 16 floppy discs, $600. Film Scanner: $3400. Film Recorder: $30000.

Most recent Setup: Big, super fast Windows machine with 2 28" monitors: $2300

We've come a loong way!

Mike

[Jeff Watkins]

I happen to use Illustrator and typically export as .AI Version 8. I save a latest version file for my editing and then clear all but what I want exported and save as a AI Version 8 and it's been working well. If I export as .DXF, *sometimes* I can get my layers to show up in Ezcad but not reliably and with colors like the Ezcad manual says you can.

@Bill When you export from Corel do your Vector line colors carry over to EzCad? The manual says that you can color lines in Illustrator and it will show up in Ezcad but it doesn't work for me with either 2.7.xx or my current 2.14.9. Per BJJCZ, they are no longer introducing features or working with EZCad 2 and are focusing on EzCad 3. I would've got a 3d board had I known that when I ordered in December.

I managed to get a hold of Ezcad 2.14.9 so I also have that Cross Hatch option in the Hatching panel, 2.7 that shipped with the laser didn't have some of the options. Something odd I ran into with some graphics is checking the Cross Hatch box can cause goofy results. For example, a 45 degree hatch with the Cross Hatch box checked causes odd or even missing lines. But, if I do a 45 degree hatch in Hatch 1 and a 90 deg hatch in Hatch 2 it works perfectly. Just something to be aware of. If something doesn't work one way try changing one thing at a time till it comes out correctly.

Cheers!

[John Lifer]

Materials can be infuriating. Have a customer that wants me to work with some Glock frames... I hadn't worked with my one Glock yet, most plastics have been trying to get color change. This is for deep cutting. That should be easy, yes?
Not so much. He brought me two sheets of Fiberglas filled Nylon 66. a Black and a grey. Dang, I got the BEST ever color change, almost pure white. With almost ALL my settings! Either that or direct melting. Gave up on those sheets with my fiber. The CO2 gave me much easier and repeatable results. My Glock case won't change color, but I found good settings to cut reliably. FIBERS!

[Mike Tiehen]

Kev,

That nailed it! turning Auto Rotate "off" did the trick. No more endless passes... and the engraving is much better.

My son had an "Ah Ha!" moment the other day... it really sunk in what the settings were doing, pens, hatch, power, freq, speed, etc. Was fun to see him go to town creating art and actually confident it would engrave like expected. Still much more to learn.

Zytel is still making him crazy. Slight changes to speed, power and freq does drastically different things to his test materials. He is getting a good color, but to try deep engraving makes a gooey mess.

Lastly, He revisited Corel on my system, and found the export into .plt formats was better than exporting it from Inkscape in almost all cases. The trace function is definitely better.

Thanks all!

Mike Tiehen