LaserPro Spirit, work area

[Mitchell Andrus]

For one job, I need to extend the work area from the standard 25" to about 27". I've never had a need to do this and I'm stumped --- and the pdf manual isn't helping.

Anyone know how to do this? Is it a control panel, or driver thing?

TIA

[Mike Null]

I don't have that brand but on the three brands I'm familiar with it can't be done. That is you can't make the engraver engrave beyond the rulers.

Whenever I've had an oversize piece I would manipulate the drawing so I could run half at a time or center the workpiece on the x ruler and run the job that way.

[Mike Hood]

On mine (Explorer II / Pinnacle ZX) you simply remove the rulers and check the "Extend" box in the printer driver. It takes you out an additional couple of inches.

You can also index the piece through the front / back pass-through doors so you're only limited by the width of the piece. It takes a bit of planning and forethought, but I've cut pieces over 9 feet long and almost 3 feet wide in mine this way.

[Mitchell Andrus]

That's it Mike (Hood), worked like it's supposed to! I didn't touch the rulers though, nor change the paper size on the screen.... I just ran the design out past the L/R edges and ignored the "Issue" warning.

Mike (Null), many Laserpro models have the ability to use the 'ramp-up' area at either side of the bed. Usually this is reserved to get the head up to speed to even out the power as you raster. When vector cutting, there really isn't a 'can't cut til the head's at speed' issue, so the area is available if you know how.

I've got a new 1/4 page add in Woodwork Magazine this month and wouldn't you know.... the first sale for an inlayed veneer... I need that extra inch!!! <insert joke here>.

[Mike Hood]

That's the first thing I did on mine. Move the rulers. You'll eventually drive the beam up onto them if you don't (been there).

I just keep a mental note to do my engraving more towards the center of the table and turn off the "extend" feature to get ramping to work in my favor.

Glad that helped. Can't do that on other brands.

[sunil jain]

check the extend option and get it done.

[Mike Hood]

That is one of the many nice features of the GCC Laserpro units.

[Mitchell Andrus]

This from Scott Faulkner of Swiftech, my local dist.:

He's refering to my simply checking 'extend' as opposed to properly setting Corel paper size, driver paper size settings, etc. For vector cutting, it works the easy way, maybe not so much for engraving - I do so little of that, I'm not even testing for problems.

Remeber that paper mismatches (when the page size in Corel & the paper size in the print driver differ) will allow the laser to do wierd things with respect to the location of engraving. Don't do it. Also anything off the page in Corel will not engrave.

[Mike Hood]

It's really easy to set the layout by telling Corel to "Set From Printer". I use mine exclusively in extend mode.