Trotec Speedy 100 is scaling my vector cuts

[Jonas Brand]

Hi

I have a brand new Trotec speddy 100 30watt. I am going to use this to cut out screen printed gameing tokens. The screen printig process is 99.9% accurate i have spent that last week calibrating my frames and machines.

The problem now is that my laser seam to scale my cut file down by 0.5mm when im cutting a full work table 24x12 (ca 750 tokens). I know this becuse i took my cut file and scaled it up by 0.5mm and now it hits its cutting lines.

Has anyone else encountered this problem? I have a space of 1mm from my cut lines to my printed grafic so a scaling of 0.5mm is alot in my world. Im Using illustrator to make my vector and grafic files.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hello Jonas, I can think of one reason it would do that, and it has to do with how you send the job over. I haven't sent jobs from Illustrator, so I can't help on that one, but we would need to know what size your artboard is, then when you send it over, in the driver, what you have set there in the job size, along with whether or not you have Minimize to Job or Take from Application turned on. Can you give us that info, or even better take screen shots and show those screen shots of those settings?

[Jonas Brand]

I have corel draw x6 as well i was using that first. But i do my artwork in illustrator so i tought it might be something that happend in the file conversion. Since it happens with corel and illustrator, and its that same amout of scaling.

I use "userdefind" 609mmx304mm, Which is what my artboard is also set to both in corell and illustrator, I do not have "minimize to job" or "take from application" turned on. There is no scaling in any of the print dialogs that i go through either before i send it to the jobcontrol software.

[Scott Shepherd]

Jonas, can you try this- draw a rectangle around the boundary of the artboard (same size as artboard) and make it a color like light blue or some color in the Trotec palette that you aren't using. Then, send it over and when you put User Defined, enter something that's maybe 5 or 10mm larger in both directions, and check the "Minimize to Job Size" on. Hit print.

When it goes over, if you double click it in the job queue, it'll snap it into the top left. See if that fixes it. If it does, then we know it's an issue with something in the file that's getting resized when sending over.

What you are describing happens a lot when there is a mismatch between the size of the workspace and the size of the artboard, but it sounds like you have checked it. Try my suggestions and see if it solves it.

Essentially, we're sending the job over to a larger plate, so it should stop any of that from happening, if that's the case.

[Jonas Brand]

Just did that.

I got the same result. I tried corel and illustrator. I dont understand why it would scale anything.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm stumped on that one. If you want to zip the illustrator file and upload it (strip out any engraving that you might not want seen), I'll take a look at it and see if I get the same results with your file.

I can't find anything in the service manual about scaling issues, nor have I ever seen it.

[Jonas Brand]

How do i upload to the forums? (edit: figured it out)

Its realy hard to measure the scaling without the print. How are you going to test it?

Maybe i should get the Trocam software from Trotec for these types of High precision jobs....

[Scott Shepherd]

Click on the "Go Advanced" at the bottom of the reply and there's a paper clip icon there. Start with that.

I should be able to see the sizes in the drawing, and when I can cut it on a piece of card stock and measure that against what's in the file. Trocam? That's like $5,000. I've never seen the scaling issue, so post it, we'll try and figure it out. You don't need Trocam to get accurate cuts. I've been around here since 2007 and I've never seen this issue raised, so my guess is it's something we can fix, not something you have to buy additional software to run.

[Jonas Brand]

Great to hear that i dont need expensive software.

I can fix it by scaling up my cutting files. But it is very annoying to have to do that when its supposed to be accurate.

When you are testing the file you dont have to cut all of the tokens i have been getting the same error with just a few in each corner, with the rest being in the file but in a "skip" colour.

[Scott Shepherd]

When you send it over to job control and put it on the plate, if you zoom into the plate and look at the end of the job on the scale at the top, does it come up short there? Drop a guideline at the right dimensions (click and drag from the ruler like you do in Illy), then click on the tiny little bar at the top of the ruler where the line comes in and it'll open up the box that lets you put dimensions in. Enter the exact dimension it's supposed to be and see if it's right. That would tell us if it's getting scaled from Illustrator to Job Control, or from Job Control to the laser.

I cut a couple pieces out and measured them and they looked right to me, but they are very small parts and it wouldn't take them being off by more than .02mm or so to make it wrong across the sheet and I'm not sure me measuring what I measured is going to tell us that or not.

One thing I'd ask is what the material is? I have certainly seen acrylic move around a lot on the table, especially when it's a lot of cuts. Don't know if that's what it is, but it's something to put into the equation. We're only talking about .5mm (.020" inch) over 24", so that's not much. I've certainly had acrylic move .8mm across a sheet before (too many times).

[Jonas Brand]

I did the ruler check as you said in job control and its spot on 609 if it was getting scaled it would be 608,something.

I am cutting acrylic 3mm.

But when im testing the cuttlines i set my power to 5% and i start with the parts most removed form 0.0, Its off with its first cut. Not that its moving cause the cuts are spot on when i scale them up by 0,5mm. The way I do this is by grouping all my grafics/vectors and then increase the groups total size by 0.5mm in both directions.

Also its not possible to measure the parts because the scaling is so small on the indevidual parts. You have to cut one part from each corner and then measure the cut to the left and top artboard edge on the cut and then on the file.

[Scott Shepherd]

Can you do a simple test, like just cut a rectangle that's a given dimension? Just add for the kerf? Maybe something like 600mm long x 25mm tall? Just add .15mm to all dimensions for the kerf (guessing), and cut it, then physically measure the piece and see if it's .5mm too short? That would tell you if the machine is scaling or there's some other issue.

[Jonas Brand]

Did the square test.

Made a square thats 600x300, did the ruler test in Jobcontrol its spot on 600x300 on the plate.
I cut the lines at 3% power and 0.65 speed. Got a nice super thin hairline thats easy to measure. Measuerd it with some help and trippel checked it using a steel ruler, the square is 599,5mm +/-0.01mm X 399,5 +/-0.01mm.

So the machine scales it?
Or the softeware scales it on the way to the machine?
What are the tolerances on these lasers? If its +/- 0.5mm im screwd...
Back to a previous topic. Would TroCam solve this at all?

Thanks for the help

[Scott Shepherd]

Did the square test.

Made a square thats 600x300, did the ruler test in Jobcontrol its spot on 600x300 on the plate.
I cut the lines at 3% power and 0.65 speed. Got a nice super thin hairline thats easy to measure. Measuerd it with some help and trippel checked it using a steel ruler, the square is 599,5mm +/-0.01mm X 399,5 +/-0.01mm.

So the machine scales it?
Or the softeware scales it on the way to the machine?
What are the tolerances on these lasers? If its +/- 0.5mm im screwd...
Back to a previous topic. Would TroCam solve this at all?

Thanks for the help

That's bizarre Jonas. I'm afraid that's going to take a call to Trotec on Monday unless someone else chimes in. The machine should not scale anything. I cut a lot of precision parts, not unlike what you are doing and I have never seen the machine scale anything. I'll poke around the settings a little and report back. I have a long running job on a different machine right now, so I have a little time to look around.

I have double checked the service manual and there's a troubleshooting section in the back of it and there's zero mention about anything scaling or having issues.

I seriously doubt Trocam would solve this. Your machine should cut right, Trocam or not. A 600 x 300 rectangle should cut 600 x 300 minus the kerf width, so it sounds like some issue. Let me look at my settings and get back to you. I've got to load another piece of material on the other machine, but once that's done, I'll spend some time looking around in the machine settings and see if I can see anything and I'll report back in the next 30 minutes or so.

[Jonas Brand]

Looks like i will be making that call.

Luckyly i know the scale factor. So i can scal up my cuts. Its just that i shouldnt have to do that.... It makes my production process alot more complicated for sure.
Could the files be corroupted in some way?
Maybe i should take them into a cad software first, measure them and then export them to Jobcontrol?