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Gregg Vaughn
02-25-2008, 3:57 PM
I just discovered something I'll pass on and maybe save others new to this business a few dollars.

I had a quickie order for 2 acrylic plaques (JDS CPQ9SBK). The plaques were the same, except for the names. Easy enough, a quick set-up in Coreldraw, put the 1st plaque in the Epilog and set the home position to the center of the engraveable area, choose print-to-center (a great time saver! thanks for the thread on that) and go.

The 1st plaque engraved great and centered perfectly. Then, change the name in Coreldraw, put the 2nd plaque in the Epilog, "print" and go.

#$%! $13.00 down the drain. I now know that the engraveable area on plaques is not always in the same area, even on "identical" plaques. In this case it was off about 1/16" and that showed up badly, especially for a new customer.

For $13 I taught myself to either measure the plaques first, or reset the home position on each plaque. If anyone would like to get off cheaper, I'll sell them my "lesson" for $6.50 and throw in shipping free!

Brian Robison
02-25-2008, 4:19 PM
Hmm.
I'm surprised it was that far off. I've had that problem on some of they're crescents though.
I used the center to center the other day on some glass containers that I figured would be off on size and it worked great.
A little tip, when using the center to center, leave the red dot pointer on to make sure it's still in the middle.

Dee Gallo
02-25-2008, 5:22 PM
Greg, I'm curious: did you have the lettering centered in the Style menu and were the words the exact same number of letters?

- dee

Mike Null
02-25-2008, 6:20 PM
Greg

it is not at all unusual for acrylics to be off by 1/32 and sometimes 1/16.

I generally measure all before engraving and sort the odd ones out and mark the dimensions on them. It seems to be worse on pyramid shaped items.

Jerry Hay
02-25-2008, 7:01 PM
I had an order for some glasses and nothing went right. Not only did I have to reset every time I had to focus three times for each glass. I think I lost 50 bucks on a 30 dollar job. oh well I guess we live and learn.

Stephen Beckham
02-25-2008, 9:21 PM
What burnt me on the center-center print was changing from Vector to Raster. I usually draw the square with the object centered on the square - speed whatever and power ZERO. I let it trace and center on red light. Its quick and easy to always verify your center on other objects. But when you go to raster it might move slightly due to lettering having the high tops (capitals) or the low bottoms (y's etc).

Now I always switch to a combined print so that the outline trace is still part of the centering algorithm. I'll replace the object and retrace again prior to etching.

Gregg Vaughn
02-26-2008, 10:09 AM
In my case the total issue was that the "engraveable" area of the acrylic plaques (6" x 8" black) was simply not in the same in position relative to the outside dimension of the two plaques (9" x 11"). The "engraveable area", in the production process, was placed 1/16" closer to the edge of one of the plaques. I assumed they were the same, did not reset the home position, and wha-la, $13 gone.

It would have been far worse if this lesson had been learned in sky diving!