Hello All, New guy with issues on Fiber laser Rotary

[Les Dean]

Hello all, I've been lerking around posts on this board for a while. Finally joined and became a contributor. This is my first post. I have a SFX JPT 50w fiber laser with rotary. I have spent many hours trying to figure out the rotary. As you know the manual is ok but support is none existent. My software is 2.14.7 EZCAD and the manual menus are a little different than mine make the concepts a little hard to follow. My issue is gaps in the lines and hatch on the Rotary as well as inconsistent lines in the hatch when tested. The contour line seems to be square but see pic. My settings work great on flat material. It appears to be some type of timing with the rotary. I have read that increasing the pulse per from 6400 to 12800 will help. But these gaps are only on the split location/gap. I have spent many hours adjusting the settings and not much change. Scale seems to help a little but gap is still there. And the bent hatch lines I have no idea. Any suggestions? I am is your debt. See settings pics

BTW this is working in ROTARYMARK

set 2.jpg
set1.jpg
also having a hard time uploading pics of piece

[Les Dean]

This is an example , if you look close you can see small gaps and wobble in lines
pic22.jpg

[Kev Williams]

I'm curious as to what you actually engraved, the grid AND the part itself. I'm assuming the X and Y is as pictured--

As to the split-gap, welcome to Chinese fiber rotary engraving. This is an issue that's pretty much impossible to rectify. It's simply because for the seams to line up perfectly, the part MUST be perfectly round, MUST rotate perfectly concentrically, MUST be perfectly parallel to the lens, and it MUST be exactly the diameter you entered to within .01mm... If all of the above isn't true- and rarely is ANY of the above true -- then there will be either a gap where the engraving meets, or the engraving will overlap. Either result is visible. There will usually be places within an engraving where some or most of the the seams meet satisfactorily.

One 'bandaid' approach to this is to use extremely small split sizes, like .1mm or smaller, but this results in very slow engraving, and depending on the weight of the part and the pulses-per-round setting, the rotary chuck can be wobbling while engraving due to its inertia when moving, causing 'chunky' engraving. This is a good time to bring up changing the pulses per round settings...

My rotaries are set at 20,000. NOTE that you can't just change the setting in the EzCad program, you must also change the dip-switch settings on the rotary driver box to match. What I noticed right away when changing is how much smoother and slower the rotary moved. I NOTICE IN YOUR CONFIGURATION SETTINGS that your "Zero Speed" setting is 5000 pulses/per second- I have mine set to 100 pulses/per second. I'm not positive if this setting affects ALL the movement of the chuck, or ONLY the movement when going home after engraving, but I *THINK* it pertains to ALL movement. And I *think* this was the default settings in my software, I don't believe I ever changed the 'zero' speed... You might try changing yours to a slower speed and see if you notice any difference. Anyway, depending on how fast the machine is engraving those horizontal lines, chuck-wobble could be part of the cause. One way to check this is, go to the main screen and enter the F3 parameters, and click on the 'OTHER' tab- at the very top is the "start mark delay" and "finish mark delay" options. If you enter 500ms (1/2 second) in the start delay box, the machine will wait 1/2 second before engraving after each rotary move, giving it time to fully stop. If doing this helps with the wobbly lines, then you found the problem. If not, something else is going on, what that would be, ?

[Les Dean]

Thanks for the response Kev. I will try reducing the speed down from 5000 and increasing my pulse per up higher to 12800 to start. Your response is confirmation on what Ive gathered so far. the tumbler having inconsistent diameter probably doesnt help. I got closer through some settings but not acceptable. I tried the One 'bandaid' approach to this is to use extremely small split sizes. Sloow and speed/power setting will need more tweaking. I guess possibly breaking logo at more natural break points may help with larger splits or possibly smaller logos and text will help. So thank you Im not completely lost yet. Rabbits holes..lol