Laser or Corel is off??

[Trey Tull]

Good afternoon or morning everyone. I have noticed this twice so far and I'm alittle puzzled. I had an order come in for 50+ leather key chains and instead of doing them one at a time, I made a template out of acrylic. I placed the template in the machine and then filled it with the key chains. I setup the artwork in Corel using the template that I had just cut. You with me...? When I ran the job, that the engraving on the key chains on the left side was a little to the left.

I didn't think too much about it b/c the tolerances weren't that tight on key chains but now I'm working on some tiny metal parts where the tolerances are super tight and I'm trying to do 500 at a time. I'm seeing the same thing on this as well. I can compensate by moving the parts around in corel but its strange that the laser will cut the template and then its off.

Has anyone else noticed this and I'm sorry if I'm not being clear.

[Bert Kemp]

did you leave the templet in the machine and place ther parts in it or did you move the templet out.

[Trey Tull]

Thank for the reply Bert. I moved the template but I can re-align the top right part perfectly and the engraving on the top left part is off. My idea is to have two trays with 500 parts each. That way I can clean, load and spray one tray while the other one is running. The parts fit in the template with less than .002" clearance, so there isn't an issue with them moving.

The first order is over 7500 parts and I can't have any failures, so needless to say, I'm scratching my head alittle.

[kyle bonnell]

I've had this exact issue with my laser using acrylic templates. If you bought the pre-cut acrylic from lowes or home depot it's not perfectly square. You will see its possible to wiggle the acrylic slightly in the upper left corner depending on which edge hit the ruler first. Took me a while to figure it out.

[Robert Bonenfant]

I would check your temple tray first and than move on from there. How far off is it?? We use Corel for templates on our lasers and Cnc routers, haven't had any problems with them being shifted.
How do you import the design from Corel to Your laser program - Are both machines using the same measurement type ?? We had a problem a while back when exporting corel in Inches and our laser program was in MM - It was a simple fix but puzzled us for a few days, It made our parts just a little larger than they needed to be.

Simple Check to see if its corel giving you head aches - Make a Square Send it to your laser program - Save the page in corel and reopen it and send it to your laser program again - They both should line up directly on top of each other.

[Bill Stearns]

‘While back I had experienced a similar issue. I use CorelDraw X5, and cut my templates out’ a 1/16” Lasermax.
BTW: I place thin panes of glass over the items set into the template, engraving, first, on the glass to ensure correct positioning of each image to be engraved.
Sure enough, sometimes, the image(s) would be off a “hair”, or so.
In my case: I called Epilog; told ‘em ‘bout my problem. Don’t quite recall the full details, but, basically the fellow walked me thru how to digitally alter my positioning using the control panel - inserting a “code” he gave me, if I remember right - I then tapped the displayed setting numbers up, or down - left, or right - the image would move a smidgen with each tap. Then, I saved the setting ‘n haven’t had the issue since.
Maybe, somebody else can better explain what I’m talking ‘bout? - especially, if you’re not using an Epilog machine. BILL

[Bert Kemp]

Did you figure this out??

[Mike Null]

Trey
I'm not sure if this will help you but you can lock your drawing in place so that it can't be moved accidentally. Look under the "arrange" menu for "lock object".

[Kev Williams]

Are you using air assist when cutting the templates? Could be the air pressure is moving the substrate. Been there done that