Apologies in advance if this has already been asked but couldn't find an answer.
I'm looking at a chinese import laser from HPC (thanks for the recommendation DaveS :-) but there's small issue I'm trying to get straight in my head which anyone with one of these machines will probably haver an easy answer to (its possible that its not an issue at all but as my wife says I do tend to over think things!)
The bed has a slatted base which by all accounts is a good idea. However it doesn't appear to have any frame or stops at the left and top. I've seen these on other brands (some with measurements) and the work piece is placed against these stops to presumably allow for consistent alignment of repeat work i.e.. say there are ten jigsaws to cut, all exactly the same - place wood sheet into machine against stops, check alignment/layout etc and press go, when finished remove and place another sheet of wood in and press go etc.etc. Makes sense to me, especially if you have some jigs made for smaller items that need accurate repeat alignment.
So have have other users got around this?
I have spoken to a couple of people at HPC and not really had any sensible suggestions as to how this could be done sorted other than placing a board down and burning an outline, then aligning to that each time, which sort of defeats the object of having a slatted base if there's a burnable board underneath your work, plus that's puts a lot of responsibility in the hands of the operator to get it right every time.
It sounds like I'm asking for 'tartan paint' again but seems logical to be able to do that.
Apparently 'modifications at cost ' have been done on machines previously to accommodate this simple scenario but no pricing was forth coming. So any suggestions for a real world way of doing this I'd be obliged.
On the upside - after several weeks of searching I have a solution (assuming the material cuts well enough) to my 'laserable vinyl' requirement to make some masks for sand blasting. I understand this is a fairly common thing from forum posts but non pvc material seemed hard/ipossible to find here in UK. However it turns out that a material that I already use for something else and I have a box of is in fact pvc free, adhesive and 'should' be cuttable/rasterable whatever the term is, with a laser assuming its possible to get the depth of cut accurate enough. Other material of similar thickness works ok so pending tests by the nice chaps at HPC I'm good to go, so hurrah for that.
The material for anyone else thats interested is a printable polyester film such as that you might use for printing adhesive car graphics etc. It comes in big rolls, but I have a supply of A4 and A3 sheets.
Cheers
Dave Hutton