This about the 2nd most frustrating thing to understand next to.... I won't say it
I've watched the video, engraving the rabbits on a 1" dia piece of ss pipe, and I get the jist of it, the laser engraves a bit, rotary moves, laser continues, etc... There's a thread going about the difficulty in the getting the pieces of graphics to line up. Yet the rabbits they did from the quick look you get, appeared to line up nicely. They also did a video with text-- enter the text, turn it sideways so it engraves around, simple...do a letter, rotate next letter, rotate... easy enough-- it seems. All these guys seem to have done is enter the diameter and go...
So my problem? I have a small aluminum vial I was attempting to engrave. It's 14.3mm in dia (.562"). I'm using a 1/2" drill bit as a test subject. I'm engraving a bunch of names- I did the names in Corel, fitted it to the vial, then saved it as a DXF which I imported. Put the names in, hatch filled, went to 'rotary engrave', put in the 14.3 diameter, drew the red box which had a cross thru it. When I hit start, the thing started engraving the chuck, which was at least 3/8" to the left of the red line boundaries! But, it DID engrave the drill bit in some places, even somewhat correctly.
After that, it got worse. After attempting some adjustments just for fun, pressing start would rotate the chuck about half-way around, then it engraved the full set of names, in 2 vertical-not horizontal- sections, without ever moving the chuck! I ended up putting the table next to the empty chuck with a piece of silver rowmark on it. Changed some other numbers in the software, then ran it. The chuck would rotate, then engrave the right 1/3 of the the graphic from top to bottom- which measures 29mm btw... then the chuck acutally moved, then it engraved the middle third, chuck moved again, and did the last third..
but- the 3 3rds didn't line up, they were all pretty much in the same vertical plane as the last 3rd-- the others didn't move left. And- it's acting like the diameter is more like 14.3 INCHES, since the laser is covering 29 vertical mm on a 14mm part before moving the chuck...
OK, duh, the light just came on in my head-- it was engraving in 'axis swap', putting the names AROUND the cylinder instead of ACROSS it..
OK--I looked for ANY version of 'axis swap'--- FOUND IT! Just a single X or Y choice... OK! Don't remember changing it, but I could have--
So now I'm cookin-- So I start engraving drill bits. YAY, it's doing it right!
Only the sections aren't EVEN lining up. OK, try the split lines--
YES! The names all came out nicely! And readable! And.....
in the wrong order? The names start from the bottom and work up. The engraving's not flipped or mirrored in any way-- so how did it take a stack names- which are DXF graphics- and engrave them from the bottom up, and while engraving from top to bottom...? FWIW the "invert" box is NOT checked...
As you can probably tell I've been typing on this for a couple of hours now...