Rotary settings in EZcad

[Alan Carrier]

I received my 30W fiber laser from China last week and have spent the past few days engraving text, vector files, and photographs (on stainless steel). However, I haven't been able to get the rotary working correctly. I was trying to engrave a stainless steel mug and entered the diameter (81.44mm) in the "Part Diameter" field of the "Rotary Mark" tab and left the other settings at the default. However, the part doesn't rotate while engraving so the engraving isn't uniform (well marked in places, very light in others). Once the engraving is completed, it does rotate about an inch or so. All the plugins, including the rotary plugins, show to be available for use.

Also, when doing deep engraving of vector files, is there a loop counter in EZcad that tells you what loop is being engraved? I thought that there was, but haven't found it yet. It would be nice to know how many loops remain to be engraved when doing multiple loops.

Thanks! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Alan

[Bill George]

Boy, good luck. Do what I did do a Search copy and paste everything you can find on EZCad and the Rotary. I pasted all I could find into a Word document. Worked with a few days got some of it figured out, but got side tracked to another project.

[Kev Williams]

The rotary needs more info from you...

First, it needs to know if you're using the rotary as the X axis or the Y axis...
I believe most of us use it as the Y axis, sideways to the machine as most other rotary's...

Then it needs to know which direction to turn, meaning,
is the chuck to the left or the right of what you're going to engrave?
Me, I put the chuck LEFT, as with my other machines.

I'll assume you'll run your rotary the same way.

What to do now is, go into the 'rotary mark' menu, then hit "Param" (or F3).
in there you'll see "ID", choose "Y". To the right is "invert", click that and a check mark appears in the box.
NOTE- BE SURE TO TEST THE 'INVERT' -- on mine it must be checked- if it's not checked, it reverses the order of the engraving; what's to be on left edge will be on the right edge, and vice versa. If your engraving ends up backwards, change the 'invert'!

Now your basics are set, hit OK to go back to the main rotary screen.

You know about diameter, and 'focal length' should match your lens/table size, although I'm not sure it matters much...

"Distance Per" is how far the rotary manually jogs when you press CTRL+the UP or DOWN arrow button, or I assume if working in X mode, the LEFT or RIGHT arrow.
You can change that if you want, but beware of jogging a done job if you want to re-engrave it, sometimes it doesn't move exactly the same each time. In the top-middle is a "Y" (or X) and some numbers, this is the current coordinate of the chuck. If you start a job at zero, it must be at zero to repeat or it'll re-engrave in the wrong place..
so just beware of jogging, or just avoid it if possible.

Next to Distance Per is "Split Size"-- default is 50, which is millimeters, which is nearly 2", which is a ridiculous default split size! The 50mm refers to how far in the Y axis the machine engraves across the circumference before it moves 50mm and engraves the next 50mm. IF your's has been at 50mm and what you're engraving is less than 2" long(tall), then the rotary won't move! So what you need to do is enter a reasonable split size. If you're engraving around a 1.5" diameter, then a 1/4" split, about 6.3mm, should work. Experiment!

OR-- you can manually enter your own split lines, and put them where they'll work best. Just be sure to put in enough of them so the rotary turns often enough that the laser isn't engraving air...
to do this, just double-click within the graphic box and a line appears. Just move it with the mouse. Towards the left is 'engrave by split line', choose that or it will engrave by split size instead...

If you're just engraving text, then choose 'rotary text mark', and then it's all automatic, as the rotary will move for each letter.

Hope this helps

[Alan Carrier]

Thanks Kev! I set it to Y axis and unchecked invert (was backwards when invert was checked). The split setting was indeed the reason it wasn't moving when engraving. When I changed it from the default of 50 to 5, it would engrave 5mm, then leave a 5mm blank space, then engrave another 5mm. I changed the setting to .01 and it engraved without the spaces. I'm going to experiment a bit more with that setting.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help!

Alan

[Kev Williams]

It shouldn't leave a blank space, it should butt the seams together-- although getting a nice seam has been a problem for many of us, me included.
Gary Hair has posted some settings and procedures to help with this problem...

It's funny your "invert" is backwards to mine, but not the least bit unexpected

Your blank space is an indication of the diameter entered not matching the actual diameter, or at least in the machine's mind.
--leaving a blank space means the machine is moving based on an actual diameter LARGER than the diameter entered, whereas an overlapping seam would of course be the opposite.
Experiment with a few entry changes...

[Scott Shepherd]

One problem you can have with the rotary is that the "Step per Rotation" value is incorrect. If that value is incorrect then it will always leave a space between split marks.

Open the "Split Mark" feature, click on parameters and see what value is there. For those using their rotary successfully, maybe someone will share their values.

[Adam Haller]

Would you be able to upload photos of the settings pages you are using?

[Jeff Watkins]

Would anyone have a clue as to why my rotary makes a overlap...gap...gap pattern? It repeats over and over no matter what I do. I can adjust things till the gap is gone but then I have more overlap. If I adjust to get rid of the overlap then the gaps are worse. In both pictures below the wider swatches show the darker lines, these are the overlaps, then the lighter gaps in between. Ray Fine support says to adjust things and even to try settings other than the 12800 steps per inch it shipped with. I was wondering if anyone know if the voltage setting could affect this?

My other observation is that no matter what the spacing is set at, if I lightly place a finger on the rotary then manually move it with the ctrl arrow keys when it comes to rest it's almost like it relaxes. By this I mean it shifts back a tiny bit like a mm or so. I'm wondering if it has to do with the Sleep setting on the controller that tells the controller to disengage the rotary when it's not used for a short time.

[Kev Williams]

This is a non-fixable issue for the most part. The reason is because to get the seams to match perfectly, you pretty much have to hold a tolerance of less than .001"- but that's almost impossible to achieve because we're using a free-standing Chinese rotary device, and we have no easy way to perfectly align the thing in 3 planes; it must be aligned exactly at 0 and 90° relative to beam output, and the horizontal alignment of the rotary must be perfectly parallel to the lens. And even if we could hit all 3 planes dead to rights, it likely won't matter because the beam is nearly always angled and getting diameter inputs perfect is also a stretch...

Getting seams to line up is like Fleishmann and Pons getting cold fusion to work.... it might happen, but probably not twice

changing the steps per inch accomplishes only one thing, it slows the rotary down; the higher the numbers the slower it moves. This helps with the 'relaxing' you noticed, because moving slower greatly reduces the sudden stop-shock. This can and does help with the visible seams since the chuck is more likely to not be briefly moving back and forth after the sudden stops that 6400 or 12800 steps per rotation afford. I have mine set for 25,600 and I can't make seams invisible...

One bandaid approach some use (I haven't tried yet) is to install extremely short split distances, like .06mm or less. If you use a .03 hatch fill running perpendicular to rotation, with a .06 split it'll move every two hatches... may work, but probably slower than coal tar on a cold day...

[Scott Shepherd]

The steps per rotation is important in the fact that it should match the dip switches on your controller. You need to find them on your system and you’ll find out how they are set. You can change them to higher or lower and then make sure it matches in your settings. That’ll go a long way to making it work correctly. The Chinese dealers are famous for telling you the settings are one thing when in fact, they never changed the factory dip switches and likely never ran the rotary before crating it and sending it to you.

[Jeff Watkins]

Is there a reason my pictures disappeared from my last post?

What about the overlap that I get every two gaps. Has anyone else even seen that before?

@Kev I've successfully used the .02 settings and found that the (Diameter * Pi) / [Steps], in my case 12800, and even divided by say 6400, gives a really good result. That along with -90 hatching, since I mount my rotary at the back of the machine facing forward using the X axis. It would just be nice to be able to use those larger step sizes.

I'll give the 25600 settings a try. Does anyone know what Voltage/mAh settings they have set on their controller?

When I received my rotary it had nasty visual runout of a quarter inch or more. I sent RayFine videos and pictures of the rotary but being impatient I took it apart for a look. The hole where the base plate of the chuck connects to the motor shaft had lots of burring from when it was machined. I took the entire thing apart to de-burr, polish and clean everything and then reassembled it. After it was all back to gether, I clamped the rotary down along with my digital indicator and spun it around. It went from >.25" runout out of the crate to about .08". From there I loosened the three screws on motor side of the chuck but kept them slightly snug. I slowly turned the rotary around to find the high and low points and used a rubber hammer to tap on the high points. I reset the indicator each time and kept going around with light taps on the high spots till I got it down to 0.002" runout. I tightened the three baseplate/chuck screws up a quarter turn at a time so as not to throw out my adjustments. It's now tight and fluctuates between .001-.002" runout. Even using the digital indicator on cups, which as you know aren't always perfectly round, most of them are within a few thou to .01 fluctuation. But this Overlap AND Gap has me perplexed.

Okay, last question for now...

Does anyone have or used the BJJCZ Mark While Rotate Board? It's a interface board that goes between the controller and the rotary and allows it to mark continuously while it rotates. I contacted BJJCZ and they sell the Mark While Rotate board for $500. From the videos they have of it there are zero seems and it can spin around while vector or raster marking. I'd like to talk to someone that has one to see what a customer perspective is.

Cheers all and thanks for the responses.

[Arthur Stillwell]

Funny you mention that board. I was just talking to XT Laser about it. They called it the JCZ Continuous Engraving board. I sent them videos asking how I could get my rotary to work in the same way and they said you need a laser with that board.

I'm also curious to know if you can manually add it and how you connect it if you can.

I've seen two different versions online, the BJJCZ-RD and the BJJCZ-RG. Did they tell you the model number?

[Scott Shepherd]

Does anyone have or used the BJJCZ Mark While Rotate Board? It's a interface board that goes between the controller and the rotary and allows it to mark continuously while it rotates. I contacted BJJCZ and they sell the Mark While Rotate board for $500. From the videos they have of it there are zero seems and it can spin around while vector or raster marking. I'd like to talk to someone that has one to see what a customer perspective is.

Cheers all and thanks for the responses.

Just put your split size at .001" (English) and it'll do one line at a time. It defeats the purpose, but it'll get it done.

[Trey Tull]

I have the board and cannot get it to do anything. There is no English documentation on it and RayFine didn’t send anything. I spent 2 hours messing with it last night and failed miserably.

[Adam Haller]

I have that board and have had success with it in the past. I'm working on a new build and for some reason I cant get it the rotation orientation to change. Does anyone have any idea why I cant get the Rotation axis to change? In the pictures, it shows the bounding box ,which is represented by a straight line, as expected. However, I want that line to go left to right, not front to back as it currently is.

Ive tried changing the ID from X to Y, changing the Galvo from 1 to 2, inverting, using the rotation but nothing seems to actually take effect on which way the software thinks the rotary hardware is orientated.

I've uploaded some images of the physical orientation of the rotary compared to the galvos. I have also uploaded the mark config settings.

IMG_20191004_100454834.jpgIMG_20191004_100419258.jpgMarkcgh7.jpgRotary Mark Parameters.png