Hopefully I’ll remember all I need, and this will be a better place to leave information than tacked on the end of a previous problem thread.
I bought a 6445-S controller from Cloudray, after being told it could control a rotary U axis without needing Y to be unplugged.
I believe the 6445-S was a 6445-G that had maybe been upgraded, because later I could not flash the firmware up into the 35.01, but after much upgrading and downgrading firmware (because certain versions only rotate U, and certain versions only rotate through Y- this is in other threads here).
I finally settled on version 26.01.19.
RD Works - version 8.01.60 was needed for starters. This gives you ther option to tell it that the rotary axis is U not Y.
I figured I needed to get the rotary going in RDW before crossing into Lightburn.
Because of some issues, I created files, loaded them on a USB memory stick and carried them to the laser, then used the File command button to copy from USB to memory. (So for all this the laser was not attached to the PC.)
I forget how we established in the Ruida VENDOR settings that the U axis was 6.78967 micrometers per step or something. I’d fiddled and edited to get things to go better, 6 months ago and i was still not happy - but I left it alone… IN hindsight it is ok now.
I’ll omit the alignment part, but basically, measure the yeti or bottle diameter, and if necessary run paper around it and measure the circumference as well. (or calculate it by Pi times diameter)
Draw a box the width equal to the circumference, and the height equal to the space available for lasering. I make that dark blue in outline.
In the Work menu tab, set that to NO output. It is merely a placeholder.
Put your graphics inside the box, and centre them if that’s what you’d like. Make them black.
IN the Work tab, edit the layer parameters to speed, power, and scan gap or U advance to your choice.
Now in the User tab, go to the 3rd radio dot of menu options and down the bottom, check Rotary axis = U (not Y)
I have found that here, where it asks for steps/pulses and diameter, that those figures are irrelevant to me. I can put 12650 steps per rotation, and 70 mm diameter, or I can put 10 steps, and 10 mm - and the file still lasers the way I need when everything else was set up right.
Anyhow click “write” to save the rotary = U aspect to the PC’s memory.
Back out and rotate the file 90 degrees clockwise.
Make sure origin is checked as being where you have chosen to lock it (not absolute coordinates)
In the Configuration menu, make sure you check the centre box, or the middle right hand side of the noughts-and-crosses box of origin mark options.
Save the file to U-file,and while you are at it, make a file that runs the perimeter of a square 100 x 100 mm, at say 6% power, and 50 mm/s speed, as well. carry the USB stick over to the laser.
Pull the file and copy both to the 6445-S controller memory.
In our case the rotary was attached via its own drive, to its own green U plug on the 6445-S controller. I mounted the aero plug socket for the rotary in the bed front right corner.
Lower the laser bed to get the rotary device plus object beneath the laser head. Adjust to suit the focus gap beneath the air nozzle that you know works.
Drive/jog the head over to the upper middle or perfectly central middle of the object, and press the "origin button to lock that in.
Our rotary was a 4-wheel one, (and 3-phase), so that unlike a lathe chuck rotary, one rotation of the wheels was not necessarily a rotation of the object at all.
Vendor settings: do not touch.
User settings in the controller: jog down the list to U axis, tell it that U is rotary.
Type in the diameter. Now here you will need to establish your calibration figure of how many pulses per complete circle revolution.
For arguments sake lets say 12 thousand.
In my case I taped paper over the object, and sent the square file to it.
Then measured the resultant ‘square’. The X axis was perfect for 100 mm.
The Y or U part of the square was either too short or too long. Say it was 120mm instead of 100, then reduce the calibration figure by 100/120 times the 12 thousand. Then type that in the pulses space, and write that configuration to the RDcontroller.
Send the square file again, and remeasure. Re-tweak again till it’s close enough to 100 x 100 mm.
Then send your actual file to be lasered.
As for slippage, set the U jog speed in vendor settings to a very LOW jump off speed, eg 5mm/sec, and a low acceleration. If it can start gently, you’re less likely to encounter slippage. If you can find another menu tab to set these low, then use them.
I found I needed a figure of around 24 thousand pulses per rev on bigger objects, down to about 7000 for smaller objects.
You can eventually establish a ratio of so many pulses rev per millimetre of object diameter, and then will always have a figure to input and save to the user parameters in the RD console. [click ‘write’ all the time after an edit]
Hope this helps.
So basically you had to tell both RD Works as well as the Ruida 6445 that U is being used, and only the 6445-S console needed to know any User calibration figures.
I hope this helps someone!
