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Pete Andrew
12-10-2007, 2:07 PM
Hi all

Just been very frustrated by a load of rubber stamps I am doing. I start off with the usual rastering from the bottom to the top, then get around to cutting them out and all the cut outs are 3 or 4mm to the left! :mad:

Best part of an A4 sheet ruined - but why is that? Never had this before.
It seems the rastering and the vectoring are not aligned, but that is of course nonsense - isn't it?

Using a Laserpro Mercury (Pinnacle), 30 w, Corel 9. .....And more rubber than I had planned.....

Has anyone come across this before? Anyone got any ideas how to prevent it from happening again?

Ed Newbold
12-10-2007, 2:39 PM
I have a Universal M-300 and this happened to me once. I solved it by examining the print properties "advanced" tab and found X/Y offset coordinates there. X/Y offsets should be left at 1.00 for each axis. However, I'm not sure where you'll find this in a laserpro driver.



Hi all

Just been very frustrated by a load of rubber stamps I am doing. I start off with the usual rastering from the bottom to the top, then get around to cutting them out and all the cut outs are 3 or 4mm to the left! :mad:

Best part of an A4 sheet ruined - but why is that? Never had this before.
It seems the rastering and the vectoring are not aligned, but that is of course nonsense - isn't it?

Using a Laserpro Mercury (Pinnacle), 30 w, Corel 9. .....And more rubber than I had planned.....

Has anyone come across this before? Anyone got any ideas how to prevent it from happening again?

Barb Macdonald
12-11-2007, 5:27 PM
After working fine all morning, vectoring was shifted right, I guess rastering shifted left too, and it got worse further along and down. Just little gravoply plates. And the epilog guy said "Clean the pulleys for the motors, loosen off the motor pulley first" because of lots of build-up, it causes the x-axis to skip. I knew things were going too well, I even thought to myself (always a HUGE mistake) "Things are going quite well". I had just cleaned the encoder strip etc. yesterday, after short runs of wood & acrylic & gravoply, thought I was looking after Abigail (my machine's honoured moniker) properly. I explained to the tech last time I had a problem (with alignment) (still an issue, again, I think), that I was very good at machine maintenance, but I needed to know what and where and how to clean, and what to watch out for. There isn't any mention of this type of cleaning in the manual... Maybe a video? The tech is going to send pictures, etc. I ordered a bunch of bits from laserbits/engraversexpress, and I want to burn them!!
The rastering was fuzzy at top left, Much better down and right.

I'm awaiting tech's pictures, because his description of what I had to do made me fear for the machine's other bits. Taking off both side panels, right side of the machine first, farthest from the engraving home. Loosening the two screws on the "swing arm", which is attached to a spring was supposed to allow the black pulley's spool to loosen off, but I could only get a very small amount, like 0.25" of "play" between the pulley's black belt and the spool. Tech said to tighten the screws so that the slack remains, but the screws hold enough for no more movement. I loosened both oh so carefully, but the swing thing wouldn't. Tech didn't think I was doing it right, hence the pictures are coming. My partner and I both pushed HARD on the pulley's spool, straight towards the top left home. I am scared of breaking things, I admit. Maybe it's time to play jigsaw puzzle in reverse, and clean every surface I find!
Anyway, thanks, any and all suggestions very much appreciated.

Have a good night

Barb

corel x3, epilog legend ext 60 watt, xenetech rotaries, I'm tired of typing this, where can i change this? All you brilliant people with your often hilarious oh sorry puppy's awake gotta go

Richard Rumancik
12-11-2007, 6:14 PM
. . . Just been very frustrated by a load of rubber stamps I am doing. I start off with the usual rastering from the bottom to the top, then get around to cutting them out and all the cut outs are 3 or 4mm to the left!

Pete, I have a siilar machine and can't say that I remember this happening . . seems like it lost its origin between raster and vectoring. Are you sure that the page setup for the laser printer driver is identical to that in CorelDraw? eg are you using the same "page size" for both? This can cause an offset image. But I don't know (and would not really expect) the raster and vector to move independently. . .

You might have to try to duplicate the problem, but it is messy to make a "problem demo" file when it takes a long time to raster. Can you simplify the file and see it the problem remains? If so, you have a file you could send to GCC for analysis. But of course there is some risk that if you simplify the drawing file, the code causing the glitch will be deleted as well.

Bill Cunningham
12-11-2007, 11:02 PM
The rubber stamp driver in the epilog tt does this normally it would seem.. When ever I do stamps and I do a fair number of them, ($10-$15k worth a year). I usually shift the cut line a mm to the right. Then, the stamp rasters, and the cut happens right where it should.. On the epilog, this is a software idiosyncrasy, if I separate the two functions, raster the stamp, then send the vector cut line to the work, the offsetting does not occur.. It only happens in the stamp driver..

Barb Macdonald
12-12-2007, 9:22 AM
Bottom-up engraving? I don't do stamps as of yet.
The machine also insisted on vectoring a cut-line around a logo, the day before. I had to send the job as a raster only, then send the vector outline of the plate only, or the logo would vector cut-out.
waiting for input, of any kind?
thx
B

Barb Macdonald
12-13-2007, 1:47 PM
The epilog guy was great, I had to remove the x-motor, and clean the gunk build-up around the belt-spool pully thingy.
It wasn't as easy-peasy as the epilog guy said, but he is, after all, a techie, but it is now working, again... I also upgraded the firm-ware. And checked alignment, and it's just a smitchen off in the bottom right corner, so I THINK I am good to go. Now, to get the nerve up again:)
Still waiting on the exhaust upgrade guy to call me, that's a big part of the problem, I know.
I wish I was a mechanic/techie/pardon-the-expression geek. But hey, I can remember specs like crazy!
Phone Numbers, I'm everyone's personal directory assistance.....


Thanks to Epilog, but I STILL say, that should have been in the manual. Epilog said it can take a LONG time for the gunk to build up, or, if you're doing plywood/acrylic/gravoply, the problem will increase more quicker:)
I guess I should have stuck with anodized aluminum, until I get the exhaust fixed, for GOOD!!

Snowstorming in TO.
Have a great day

To The Creek, and all on the Forum
Merry Christmas, and all the best in 2008

Barb