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mike klein
12-20-2005, 7:15 PM
Up to today, the machine has been engraving perfect, I mean on metal and plastic which we do a lot of. I noticed today after doing some anodized metal plates, the text is not straight, especially noticable in the vertical lines, I mean they are very what I call Wiggly.. Called signwarehouse tech. and he told me a few things to check including cleaning all the mirrors and the lens which I do anyway, and also to pull the cover off and re-tighten all the set screws on the pulleys, etc. I also noticed a lot of residue build up on the metal tracks where the roller wheels run which I cleaned. Basically, I went thru this machine completely and it is spotless now and everything to my knowledge is snug and tight.

Did a test run with just the letter 'I' and 'M' and it looked perfect. Put some material in to do a full engrave of it and when it got done, it looked terrible.

Anyone else heard of prolems such as this and now of something I may have missed?

Mike

Jim A. Walters
12-20-2005, 10:02 PM
I had this happen a while back. One evening the machine was running fine, and the next morning we couldn't get a decent engraving. I did all that you did including replacing all the rollers. I called Kevin Huffman, and he told me how to fix it. I am attaching a link to the Signwarehouse PDF manual. Look at the bottom of page 43. I hope this is the fix. We are now engraving better than we ever had previously. (We do barcodes, so the vertical alignment is critical!)

My magic number was -0.011" ( I have a 2003 M-25)

http://64.246.63.172/~vidhost/videos/lasers_drivers_tutorials/M-series/man_Mseries_0204V1_1.pdf

David Barron
12-20-2005, 10:25 PM
Mike,

Any chance you could post a picture of the problem you are having? A visual might clue us in a bit more. The only time I can ever remember having a problem similar to what you describe is when I had a loose mirror, but I doubt that is the case from what you've stated.

When you cleaned the track, etc, did you also do it under the bar, or only on top? It is important to do both, and I would say to do this at least once a week, though I've always suggested every time you clean your lens and mirrors.

mike klein
12-20-2005, 10:57 PM
Well here is one line of text which I engraved earlier this evening on a piece of anod. black alum and as you can see especially in the letter 'N' 'M' 'K' 'A' 'Y' how uneven the lines are. What puzzles me is that we have been engraving this and many plastic materials day after day with no problem and now all of a sudden this starts happening.

Yes, David I did clean the bottom of the track also, which did have some residue on it. The machine is basically spotless inside now as I spent close to 2 hours making sure every sq. inch was cleaned. The only mirror I have not checked yet and that is the one down by the tube, which according to the manuf. only needs to be checked around every 6 months or so, but, maybe a person ought to look at it I suppose. I have been toying around with the 'Image Tuning' function somewhat, but I can see that is going to take some time to work with...

Here is a link to the picture...

http://www.precngraving.com/lasereng_1.jpg

Mike

Dave Fifield
12-21-2005, 4:48 AM
I don't know anything about the Pinnacle laser, but I'll throw out a few ideas anyway.

Does the Pinnacle use a linear motor or a stepper motor for the x-axis Mike? If it's a linear motor, it could be a dirty position indicator on the X-axis that's causing this.

When I enlarge the picture, it's a bit difficult to see, but it looks like the problem is that the x-axis position is being shifted just a little sometimes as the laser rasters back and forth in each X direction (left to right, and right to left). As I said, it's not very clear - it looks like on some passes the laser starts the line late and finishes early, so it may not be a mechanical problem at all....difficult to say without a higher res picture.

How rigid is the stand/table that you have the laser on? If it is rocking from side to side as the laser rasters, that could possibly cause some x-axis error like this. Maybe something about the laser's physical location changed? Loose bolts in the stand? Table legs moved?

Any help? Hope you get to the bottom of this problem quickly Mike.

Dave F.

Jim A. Walters
12-21-2005, 7:10 AM
Mike,

Look at the engraving under a magnifiying glass. You will see that every other line is offset. Once you set the image tuning, it should clear up the problem. I did a range of tests starting with +0.005, +0.010,
-0.005, and -0.010 to find out which direction I should go. Once the engraving got better, I kept narrowing down the number until it was perfect. Minor quality issues I have had with my customer have all gone away. Even their prehistoric barcode readers can read our serial plates now.

It does take a while, but the work is worth it!

mike klein
12-21-2005, 8:10 AM
Jim,

Thanks for the input. I will give it a shot. It just makes me wonder though, why, all of a sudden it starts doing this. I have been engraving a lot of material in the past few weeks and it worked perfect, and now some adjustments may have to be made to the software.

I just did a plastic plate here this morning and have always engraved the lasermax at 60sp and 30pwr, 500dpi, quite different than Romark recommends, but these are the settings that give me the best results as far as clean detailed text, and it looks considerably different than the same piece I did last week. I do appreciate yours, and everyone elese's input, but there still has to be a reason why this has changed, in my opinion. I will definately try adjusting the offset though...

Mike