Newbie with the 30w laser, rotary issues. /sigh

[Michael Carter Jr.]

Hey folks, Mike here again.

Thanks to Scott, my machine is perfectly aligned, but I'm now having issues with the rotary. I set it all up and configured as per the instructions (As they are). I put a bottle in the chuck, got the red box to where it was supposed to be (Though it seems to change size sometimes, have not figured that out), put the diameter in, and hit the mark button. The chuck moved a little bit, but not enough to laser around the edge. It actually still treated it like a flat surface.

I was using the rotate text option as the instructions stated, and I tried a few others, but no luck. Can anyone shed some light?

Thank you,

Mikeimage1.jpgimage2.jpg

[Bill George]

So what machine is this? Fiber or CO2? Taking pictures of the screen is not a good way to post results. Do a Search online for Screen capture, everything you need to do it is on your Windows machine.


So it is a Fiber laser with the Rotary. Open up the Search function here and do a lot of reading, some as recent as last week. The Rotary on a Fiber laser is the Chinese way of revenge for electing Donald Trump.

[John Lifer]

I almost resent that comment Bill, but I almost agree with it!
I think they really were preparing it for the Democrats as they are REALLY good computer users.

But enough Politics, Mike, Do what I did last night. Resist the urge to just keep wandering and Print off the whole 142 page manual.
I did in booklet form and it only took 30 odd pages... I sat down and read about 2/3 of it last night, and found a few things I'd missed, and it does help a bit.

You showed us the parameters screen, but not what you were trying to engrave.

If you are trying to engrave text, you have Y enabled, it will put text in line with the y axis and it won't rotate much. Change to x axis and then make sure your text is decent size. I put the image or text at center of page, my f1 light doesn't really show good as to where it will engrave like on flat work, and I know center is where the pointers are and hence rough location.
Oh, select power setting first, and then go into whichever rotary function you are trying to use. I played with the ruler function a bit today and actually marked my rotary with 5 degree lines, 15 and 30 degree labels. Took a bit to understand, and if manual isn't printed out it would be difficult swapping screens to see PDF.
Just get you plenty of scrap pipe and play some!

[Scott Shepherd]

Shouldn't you be using "Split Mark"?

[Kev Williams]

From my fiber rotary follies lately, and this menu...
lmenu.jpg
Here's what I (don't) know ..

Rotary Marking and
Rotary Marking2 -- from what I gather, these are 'extensions of the Z axis', and rotates the work based on angles rather than distance-
My knowledge level: 0 ... Could be that using calculations based on radius may be work out better than diameter settings, but then, diameter is just radius x2 so...?

GlobeMark-- There's like 5 pages of instructions, I can't make sense of it. But then, I've always had trouble engraving spheres...

MultiFilemark-- may or may not be an option on your version, my EZcad has it, but my instructions don't--?
not for rotary, but for loading different jobs to be engraved on the same part and running them automatically
-- but I've never tried it...

Multi Part Mark-- also not for rotary, just a way to enter coordinates for engraving the same thing in different places on one part..
--never tried this either...

PowerKeyboard-- not sure but I think it's just a way to shortcut job input using hotkeys?

Power Ruler-- for making rulers, probably something I'd never do with a galvo steered laser...

RingMark-- this is for engraving rings, inside and outside. One of these days I'm going to try it--

RotaryMark-- THIS ONE is the 'go-to' rotary job. Use this for graphics. But if you're going to engrave ONLY text around the circumference, then use

RotaryTextMark- This automatically moves the rotary letter by letter, line by line.
It works fantastic, but ONLY for text, and ONLY text generated by EZcad. Imported text from Corel or wherever isn't text,
it's "curves" aka "graphics", and EZcad needs you to specify the split on graphics...

SplitMark2-- The Chinglish instructions just don't make much sense to me, all I can gather is that allows you create splits on both X and Y axis's...
Not exactly sure when that would come in handy, considering the non-rotating axis is limited to your lens length (6" in my case), not to mention, why split an axis that's not rotating?

[John Lifer]

And one question guys, what version of this software are you using? RotaryMark2 and globemark doesn't exist in my version 2.12.nor, power keyboard. Oh, and I played with power ruler today. I marked my rotary Chuck with degree ticks at 5 degrees and every 15 and 30 with numbers. Actually worked fine once I figure out the method. Which isn't really quick nor intuitive. Then lengthened lines towards the front. But the linear ruler won't work correctly, want to use rotary.
Thanks for the info on rotary text Mark, so far only used ezcad text, I'll forget about imported unless as just vector graphic.

Link to video, Pain to make, fun to engrave..... Took a couple of passes, but worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-rSXkpABwE

[Scott Shepherd]

And one question guys, what version of this software are you using? RotaryMark2 and globemark doesn't exist in my version 2.12.nor, power keyboard.

There is also an EZCAD Lite and that doesn't have the options Kev listed either. You can't upgrade EZCAD Lite to EZCAD because the board isn't compatible.