Sporatic lines being engraved. Please help!

[Ed Miller]

Howdy all,

I have a major problem on my hands and I would hate to tell my customer that I can't complete his order in time for the holidays.:(

Here's what I'm trying to do...
I have (12) 4.25" laser tiles that I need to place a mural on. I have scanned in the image and sized it accordingly to fill the mural. I've chosen to edit the bitmap from within CorelDraw 12; therefore, use Corel Photo Paint 12. Once in photo paint, I've cropped out 4.25" regions and saved each one as a bitmap image.

I went back into CorelDraw and imported one of the bitmap regions. I then proceed to engrave the laser tile; however, I'm getting very strange results. Every know and then the laser engraves a straight horizontal line across the entire tile. The placement at the line isn't consistent with different bitmap regions; therefore, I'm totally baffled as to where this line is coming from. I checked that I don't have the grid lines or guidelines set to print. I have zoomed in as far as possible on the bitmaps and I don't see any horizontal lines.

I've even taken the liberty to convert each bitmap to a vector and I still receive the same failures.

Does anyone have any idea what would cause this? I've even tried running the job from CorelDraw 11, with no success. :(

Here's my specs and print settings:
VersaLaser 30Watt using advanced print driver set to Normal mode and error diffusion.


Thanks so much and great forum!!!

Sincerely,
Ed
nosplinters.com

[Ken Frisby]

I had a similar problem, I had to uninstall Corel 12 and install it again to get rid of the problem.

[Frank Corker]

Ed,

Might I suggest you view the document again in Corel and view the 'wireframe' you may find that the hidden lines are there but hidden behind the picture.

[Alan Young]

I had a similar problem with Corel adding phantom lines and just closed Corel and then re-opened and re cut and the lines went away. I think it sometimes gets corrupted in the data transfer. I also learned to use a lot of card board until it worked correctly. In all fairness to Corel it does not happen very often, that is why I think it is a data corruption problem. But that just my thought. You might try sending your file to another member with the same kind of machine to see if they get the same results. I have a mercury 30 watt.

Alan

[Mike Mackenzie]

Ed,

First off what advanced Driver version are you using? How long is the USB Cable? What Image density are you using? and what firmware version is the laser running?

It does sound like a file transmission error, Try sending the file using just the halftone mode.

Let me know on the other things you could just have an earlier version Driver.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Ed;
I suspect the cause may be trying to do too many things within Corel with the original image. Try preparing your image outside of Corel (Photopaint) and then importing into Corel Draw. While preparing the image, play with your brightness and contrast controls to "detect" any hidden marks/lines/junk. As someone else suggested , use the wireframe view to check for hidden stuff.
Also, is the random line vector or raster produced?
I understand you are under a time crunch- send me the imagefile (cdr) that you are using and I will check it out on my machine (gperzel@rochester.rr.com).
George

[Ed Miller]

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed response. The problems I was having slowed my Christmas production down a bit. Anyway, I believe George is correct. After fighting the line problems and finally getting the product done, I ran several other jobs on tiles and had no problems. It certainly appears that the graphic I was dealing with was in fact the problem. This time around I scanned the image from Corel and then chose to edit it with Photo Paint ( that was my problem ). I found out that going from Corel to Paint and back isn't a good idea and can result in the invisible lines being sent to the laser. I spoke with a gentlemen that has had the same problem and he recommended using Corel's tile print feature. Lesson learned on this one. :)

I now have a different problem. After upgrading to the latest VersaLaser advanced driver, I'm now unable to use it. I have to use the basic driver to set the 'z' axis and then use the advanced to load my settings. I'm not sure what's going on here. I know I've had this problem before, but I can't remember how I fixed it. Here we go again....

Thanks for all your great comments and happy holidays!

Ed
No Splinters

[Mike Mackenzie]

Ed,

What exactly is the problem?

If it is that you can not print then check to see if you are connected to the right port.

Did you un-install the advanced driver before installing the new one?

Let us know

[Ed Miller]

Hi Mike,

I realized I over looked the obvious on the advanced settings driver. I forgot to click the Auto 'Z' checkbox. Now everything is working just fine. I still think that ULS needs to have much better QA on their software and backwards compatibility issues.
Anyway, I was able to finish up some holiday rush orders once I got the machine working again. I hate when I miss something so obvious. :)

Thanks again for everyone's help and Merry Christmas to all!

- Ed
ed@nosplinters.com