Logo engrave solidworks --> trotec

[Kev Williams]

you absolutely do NOT want to make a laser engraving jig with a '3rd party' machine. As accurate as Trotecs or any other laser may be, a matrix jig made on a CNC machine simply won't match up to the laser; you WILL have locate the coordinates of every machined pocket to match the machine.

Ergo, the laser that will engrave the parts should make the jig; everything WILL line up

I do this with batches of watches to be cermarked, just lay out a staggered matrix that works, make a circle the size of the crystal, put the engraving where it goes on the watch within the circle, tape some thin cardboard on the laser table, cut the 20 or whatever holes for the watches, apply cermark, put the watches in the holes, send the job, press start and go have lunch. I've never had a mis-alignment...

[Jerome Stanek]

you absolutely do NOT want to make a laser engraving jig with a '3rd party' machine. As accurate as Trotecs or any other laser may be, a matrix jig made on a CNC machine simply won't match up to the laser; you WILL have locate the coordinates of every machined pocket to match the machine.

Ergo, the laser that will engrave the parts should make the jig; everything WILL line up

I do this with batches of watches to be cermarked, just lay out a staggered matrix that works, make a circle the size of the crystal, put the engraving where it goes on the watch within the circle, tape some thin cardboard on the laser table, cut the 20 or whatever holes for the watches, apply cermark, put the watches in the holes, send the job, press start and go have lunch. I've never had a mis-alignment...

I have made several jigs on my CNC to use on my laser and they all work great.

[Kev Williams]

Then you're one of the lucky ones. The only 2 machines I can trust to sync with each other are my Gravo IS machines. And even then 0/0 home alignment and squaring come into play, depending on the job. If you cut the jig with the same machine that will use it, most variables, aren't...

[Gary Hair]

I have made several jigs on my CNC to use on my laser and they all work great.

Same here. I have a customer that made several fixtures for their parts to be used in my Trotec. One held 100 parts and with the upper left and lower right aligned in Corel it lasered the rest perfectly.

[Brennan Sheremeto]

I'm first and foremost a solidworks guy, corel/inkscape only because I have to for the laser.

Do a 1:1 sheet of your drawing to your jig size, hide all of the stuff you don't want to engrave (this would actually be easier if you had a configuration that was just the logo as extruded bodies, solidworks will yell at you but should stay in the right place from previous mates) do a solid hatch in black and save it as a PDF.

you should be able to open that in whatever your PDF program is and do your print from there. You might be able to print from solidworks directly but I don't have a trotec so I'm not sure.

[Bert Kemp]

wow so many do it this way or this way yikes it must be so confusing to a new guy. I have to agree with Kev the easiest way and the way with less chance of mistakes is to cut the jig with the laser. Sure he's new but hey its not that hard. I'm just a hobbyist but I make jigs all the time for dog tags I do for Veterans urns. I just layout a bunch of tag shapes cut the holes put the tags in the holes and engrave all the names it fast and easy.

[Bob Loesch]

I use Solidworks for my CNC work and soon with my 80W laser. If you made a jig with precise spacings and can index the laser correctly, you should be able to make an array of your logo in SW to match the parts in the jig. Then export the file as a DXF and you should be able to import it into either RDWorks or LightBurn. When I belonged to an OpenWorks studio, this is what I did.

[John Lifer]

Nice Bob, but Trotec has their own print driver. Not rdworks, or lightburn for Chinese stuff like we have. I'd make my jigs with the laser not with another program and machine. But I wouldn't be buying an expensive laser without knowing more about it either. Sounds like a company I used to work for.

Hope you have a bunch of seconds to test on..... Anodized aluminum is pretty easy to get right though

[Andrew Romanousky]

I'll post a quick update here. Trotec guy came out on Monday, we setup the machine, and started running my desperately needed production runs ASAP. Also learned how to use the Rotary before the day was out.

Turns out this is SUPER easy. I was right on track at the beginning of this post.

First, I made the jigs cut on my CNC machine from UHMW before the trotec guy even showed up hoping I was on the right track. Then I just created a custom sheet size (same size as jig plate), justified the model in upper left corner, used solid hatch tool to fill in the logo, then hide ALL of the models and you are left with the hatch marks on the sheet. THEN PRINT DIRECTLY TO JOBCONTROL FROM SOLIDWORKS.

I can swap the plastic jigs out and print different groups of parts in a matter of seconds.

Jigs were perfect, engraving locations were perfect, didn't scrap a single part and made ZERO adjustments. Maybe I was lucky but we ran through 3 different jigs are all were perfect. I'll post some pics later. Also, the markings are WAY nicer/cleaner than what my vendor had been providing.