Can we talk a bit more about job alignment on a Trotec?

[Kev Williams]

Here's a job I did last night, 20 SS disks that need a scale and PN laser etched. Normally I do these one at a time but I'm really busy now and need to multitask, so I made up a quickie temporary jig arrangement to do 10 at a time. (running 10 takes nearly 30 minutes, plenty of time to run other jobs in between )

The way I do this is completely foolproof, the engraving simply can't be in the wrong place because only one setup is used for everything,,,

This is the the 10 piece layout in Corel...
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I've spoken many times about my 2" shims, here the table is loaded with them.
Also, on the right is my upper-right corner 'zero point' square I spoke about. Not using here, just showing it. As I mentioned, the laser cut it so whatever I park there, the machine will cut or mark perfectly aligned.

So I'm essentially starting 4" from left and 10" from the top...
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So what I did was put down some tape where the holes in the parts are, then taped some scrap Rowmark down.
Then I cut the hole centers. Note that I did some test cuts beforehand to make sure the hole centers fit right...
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After the cut, I remove the excess plastic & tape.
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My parts fit perfect, and the engraving is absolutely dead to rights.
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-- in this case I used the hole centers, because they're notched and the engraving must be referenced to the notch. If the hole was just a hole, I could've just created holes the size of the parts in scrap plastic (or cardboard) and just dropped the part in, same results. Cutting holes in cardboard is how I align engraving to watch backs, I measure the crystal (if doing a whole watch) or the back itself, I park or tape down the cardboard, put that circle as measured somewhere convenient, cut the hole, and then align the engraving within the circle that cut the hole. This like 10x faster than 'randomly' parking the watch, and figuring out where it is!

Back to my right-corner zero scale-- all anyone has to before a critical alignment job is to tape down an as-long-as-possible x 3/4" or so wide piece of scrap plastic against the top and left rulers then have the machine cut them at .500" from top and left. Once done, run a test as I describe above to verify actual zero, since the cut may remove 3 or 4 thousandths of an inch...

Once your project is ready to engrave, the new corner you created will be dead-on aligned to the machine, and the zero coordinates (now +.500/-.500") will be dead to rights. And all you've lost is 1/2" of table space...