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Brian Robison
01-23-2008, 4:09 PM
Hi Fellow Creekers!
I guess I miss understood what the center to center
feature was. I thought I could set up a plate or a tray
that was fairly deep and engrave without the air assist
or the auto focus hitting the plate on it's way back to 0.
I thought it would center on the page size. I guess I was wrong. I don't understand the benefit of this feature.:confused:

Frank Corker
01-23-2008, 5:06 PM
Brian,

Centre to centre. Put your clipart in corel where ever you want to put it. Then go to the laser, xy off. Red pointer on. Put your plate on the laser bed, move the red dot pointer to the centre of your plate (effectively the centre of your clipart) then set home. The centre of your clipart is now at the centre of your plate for lasering. When it is finished it will return to the new home (which is at the centre of your plate) which you set above.

Just to make it clearer (if I have confused you) - the benefits are that if a plate is 6" diameter. The centre of the plate will be 3" in. Provided that your artwork is inside of that 6" you will be to line it up without pushing it into the top left corner, right a little, no up a little, down a little, okay laser, oh damn I've missed it by 3/8" pass me another plate. That is the benefit!

Stephen Beckham
01-23-2008, 9:57 PM
Brian,

I use it often on one of kind type jobs. Say a pocket knife - no need to figure out where it is at on the grid or use a jig and it doesn't matter where I need to put the text on the screen. I draw a box size of my max text - center the text in the box with the desired margins - set the home to the center in the blade as my naked eye can tell - vector it with red light on center/center to see where the box hits. If I have to move it a bit, I do, but after a few jobs, you get to a point where you get real familiar with it and love it. BTW - you get a big WOW factor if you let people watch. They can't for the life of them figure out how you got that little red light to hit so close to the target so quickly.

On the Rotary device - HUGE benefit. No more finding the center point, calculating how wide the text/image is and subtracting from half of the glass to divide it by 2 to see if I can swag a start point :eek:.

Now, I just put the mug on the rotary - set home to the center of the glass - presto, it automatically reverses the halfway point and etches back through the home point down the other half. It's centered every time...

Larry Bratton
01-23-2008, 10:24 PM
Hi Fellow Creekers!
I guess I miss understood what the center to center
feature was. I thought I could set up a plate or a tray
that was fairly deep and engrave without the air assist
or the auto focus hitting the plate on it's way back to 0.
I thought it would center on the page size. I guess I was wrong. I don't understand the benefit of this feature.:confused:
Brian:
Frank explained it perfectly. You do not need to use air assist when raster engraving. That is mostly for vector cutting. Keeps down flaming and some other things.

Brian Robison
01-24-2008, 8:17 AM
Thanks guys.
Frank, it's as you explained, and my issue is as you explained too. I'd hoped it picked up the center of the page size. I wonder if I could use the X,Y coordinates to find the center of the page and still use CENTER to CENTER option?;) I'll have to play when I find the time.:cool:

Stephen,
It sounds like a very good option using it as you described.

Hi Larry,
You misunderstood what I was trying to say. The air assist and the auto focus are physically in the way. On a 1.5 inch deep silver tray (for example) if the carriage comes from the standard 0,0 position they would hit the rim of the tray. If I engraved from the center I could set the tray in and then focus without the carriage bumping into the rim.

Gregg Vaughn
01-24-2008, 10:57 AM
I understand everything in this thread and use the xy off function to reset the home position. Where, however, do I find the "center to center" option that makes the selected new home position the center rather than the upeer left-hand position?

Scott Shepherd
01-24-2008, 11:15 AM
It's on the print driver first page, right next to the "Auto-Focus" selection. It's a drop down box. You check the box and then you can pick from 3 different settings, including center/center.

Brian Robison
01-24-2008, 11:24 AM
Hi Greg,
It's a little confusing. Here's a link.
http://www.epiloglaser.com/downloads/center_center_engraving.pdf

Steve McKee
01-24-2008, 11:57 AM
Must not be available on the print driver I have, don't see any such option next to the Auto Focus selection.

Brian Robison
01-24-2008, 12:28 PM
It's on the one of the latest drivers, I don't remember the number.
Here's the latest.
http://www.epiloglaser.com/downloads_minihelix.htm

Dave Fifield
01-24-2008, 1:17 PM
Steve, you will probably have to upgrade the firmware in your laser as well as upgrading the driver in your computer. Not difficult to do, but if you don't do it right, the feature/s won't work properly.

FWIW, I use the "top-center" and "center-center" features all the time for my laser marquetry. It's one of the best features Epilog have added IMO. :)

Cheers,

Gregg Vaughn
01-24-2008, 1:34 PM
Thanks! Always learning something new ....

Peck Sidara
01-24-2008, 5:12 PM
Must not be available on the print driver I have, don't see any such option next to the Auto Focus selection.

Steve,

The centre,top & left/centre function as well as bottom up engraving is only available on current production machines, Mini, Helix, EXT & FiberMark. Unfortunately it's not available on your Legend EX.