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Tom Cullen
10-17-2006, 7:33 PM
Hi All,
I was wondering if anyone has ever seen this issue before?
I have been working on glass and acrylic, I set the job up in Corel (12) and through the print driver ( Explorer II 30W ) set my power , speed etc. The problem starts when I tell the driver to mirror the image. When it burns it seems to move the image to one side, enough that it is very noticable. When I set it up in Corel the design is centered before burning.
What do you guys think?

Tom

Lee DeRaud
10-17-2006, 7:43 PM
Sounds like the page widths aren't the same in the printer driver and Corel. When it mirrors it sets the "margin" from the opposite edge.

Can't you just use Corel to mirror the drawing?

Tom Cullen
10-17-2006, 7:50 PM
DUH!
would you believe Lee I never thought of that ( don't answer that LOL! ) I guess I just thought the driver was the best way to go. Will give it a shot in Corel MAN! I bet it's that simple. Thanks Lee.

Lee DeRaud
10-17-2006, 7:58 PM
Will give it a shot in Corel MAN!That will probably fix your short-term problem.

But long-term you should probably figure out if Corel and the laser/driver are really using the same coordinate system, because it sounds like there's either a scale factor or width limit screwed up in one or the other.

What I would do is put a small "crosshair" at all four corners of what Corel thinks are the page limits, engrave them on a piece of MDF or something, and see if they end up exactly where they should.

John Barton
10-19-2006, 2:49 AM
Yeah I found the same thing, except it was my jig that had shifted. I engrave pool balls and have a raised jig that I made with the laser. One day I was having a hard time getting the jobs to engrave without fading on the edges. I tried everything, focus depth, power, speed, checked all the alignments in Corel vs. the driver and so on. Went though about 20 jobs hacking it out before I noticed that my jig wasn't lined up and was about an eighth off. I needed to wear a dummy sign all day.

Now, unless I just KNOW that I KNOW that I KNOW everything is calibrated right - I will ususally throw a scrap piece in and open my calibration template and laser some marks to make sure that I am right before I get started for the day. It just sets my mind at ease and shows me any problems such as leaving the driver on some weird setting for whatever reason.

It's definitely important to be aware of all the different ways you can calibrate the machine and have test jobs set up for that purpose. I wasn't as diligent about it when I got started and so I lost of lot of good settings.

Save, save, save, your settings, from each job, each time you find driver profiles that work for particular jobs/materials, and the print profiles for all the other combinations. Once you build a library of such things then you'll be able to troubleshoot and fix just about any issue in minutes.