Have a question thats always been a pain for me

[Mike Christen]

So this is the scenario. I have a Corel page size of 12x12, I have a work piece of 12x12. I want to be sure that it will be in correct position before I send the engraving so I make a Square that is 12x12 with a hairline and want to send to printer and use red dot pointer to verify position. The problem is that Corel says it will not fit on media even if I increase the page size by .050". I can understand on a printer that will not print to the edge of a page but the epilog laser should not have any problems with this I would think. If I send anyways it will not follow the path, it will be croped.

So my question would be 1 - why is this 2 - is there a setting somewhere that would correct this.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone could provide.

[Robert Walters]

Have you checked the "margin" settings in Corel?

[Richard Rumancik]

Mike, my LaserPro will refuse to plot a 12" x 12" square on 12" x 12" "paper". A simple work-around is to set the square to say 11.99 x 11.99. That should fit inside your paper. At least, that works for me. I don't recall ever getting error messages from Corel though. The laser itself will display a message "graphic was clipped" if I send something too large for the paper size. Since you are printing using the laser system driver, I would have thought Corel would not interfere.

[Mike Christen]

Robert - I don't see where to set page margins

Richard - Yea I am changing the page size slightly as a work around, epilog doesn't automaticall clip as far as I know but corel does.

It would be nice to set the corner at 0x0 and have that be the zero point

[Amy Heise]

I can help on a question! haha Surprising! In order to make the top left hand corner your 0,0 coordinates click on the upper left hand corner on the ruler intersection point (the little arrow thing) and left mouse click and drag - you will get two intersecting dashed lines - move this to where you want your 0,0 on your page and let go. So basically just pull those lines just onto your corel page and it will shift your 0,0 to the top left corner. (To move it back to the bottom left - the default - double click on the ruler intersection point).

[Mike Christen]

Thanks Amy

I knew that but really appreciate the tip as I'm sure others will like that tip too.

The problem is if I put the material 0x0 at 0x0 on the page corel will crop it even if i offset it enough for the thickness of the hairline.

[Richard Rumancik]

. . . Richard - Yea I am changing the page size slightly as a work around, epilog doesn't automaticall clip as far as I know but corel does.

It would be nice to set the corner at 0x0 and have that be the zero point

Hmm . . . I didn't mean for you to change the page (paper) size. I just suggested that you change the outline of the plaque to something a bit smaller than it really is, so that it is inside the boundary of the paper. Since it is just for a visual check a few thou undersize won't matter. I would suggest keeping the paper size = plaque size, then draw the plaque just a bit undersize from what it really is.

On my machine, I generally use paper size = table size, not the size of my part or sheet. That is just a personal preference. But I still have to fib about the real plaque size to ensure it is inside the boundary.

I don't understand why you can't get the 0,0 origin for the laser to match the 0,0 origin in Corel. There should be a calibration procedure for your machine to set the 0,0 at the intersection of the rules.

With my driver, when I set my paper size in CorelDraw, I need to make sure the paper size in the driver is matched. If you tell Corel the paper is 12.50 but tell the driver it is 12.00 you will have a problem with alignment.

Just another tip if you haven't thought of it already - make sure with color mapping, the color of the outline rectangle is set with speed 100/power 1% (or something really small) so that when you forget that layer on, it doesn't ruin the plaque when it outlines it.