Fiber Laser EZCAD TC (start/stop) settings

[Brandon Whitton]

Hi guys.

I was having some issies with my fiber really stretching past the edge of letter when doing a rotary engraving, 3mm tall letters. After quote a bit of research I started messing with my start/stop settings.

Here's the issue. I was getting no real change when changing each TC setting in EZCAD. I decided to try some really high numbers to measire what changed. Long story short, in order to get it looking right I had to make the End TC setting 5,000(!). That seems VERY high. Every reference I've found people aren't higher than 600 on their settings. All of my other start/stop (laser on, laser off, polygon) are around 200 with minimal chang on increase.

In the photo you will see best in the M and the A. The bottom one is at End TC 5,000 and it's almost completely fine. The one right above is at 2,000 and the 3rd one up is at 800 and you can see it was very bad. Lines stretching almost to the next letter.

My question is: is this a concern to have to need this setting this high? Is this masking a different problem?

Edit: maybe this is an issue with doing hatching on a rotary because it isn't a problem I normally have. For reference I'm using the rotarymark plugin and I've also tried splitmark2.

Basically if someone tells me "hey if it takes 5,000 to work on a rotary that's fine" but I don't want to be masking a different issue or causing problems in other areas by having that setting that high. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.


https://i.imgur.com/FuwR9yQ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mhVNFMQ.jpg

[Kev Williams]

all 3 of my machines are set to, top to bottom:
Start------70
Laser off--135
End-------150
Polygon---85

FWIW, my Triumph used to have it's own controller card until a few months ago, different than the BJJCZ cards in my ebay machines, and I got essentially the same results. The Triumph now has a basic BJJCZ card too. Nothing changed. The only reason I changed it was I couldn't upgrade EzCad...

I DO have a small issue with these settings, which I can show you with this engraving-
This is a piece of outdoor 'trophy' aluminum, just a snick over 2" or so.
442215
This engraving took 12 seconds, pure outlines, no hatch fill..

Here's a fairly extreme blow-up of near the middle...
442216

Look closely, you'll notice that ALL of the start/stop points don't connect...
But those little circles in the mouth-area of the mask? The smallest ones on the right, they measure less than .04mm in diameter-! Less than .002"!
So if that whole circle-thing is less than .002", how large is the space between the start and stop points? --- It's completely negligible IMO.
I tried adjusting it out, but after a few adjustments that DID bring the connections closer, the engraving was noticeably slower.

Hopefully my values will work for you. But before you enter my suggested values, run a graphic or line of text that's hatch filled, that takes 20 seconds or so to run, then see if my values cuts any time down. or ADDS time, that would be interesting... ;)