I am new to all of this. I recently was engraving some tumblers, and they worked great, but when I need to engrave a plate, my engraver thinks I still have the rotary attached or something like that. I can’t get it to engrave “normal”
With your machine on and connected, open the rotary settings dialog in Lightburn and uncheck enable rotary then press the reset button on your machine control panel.
No, that shows the rotary is enabled. I does not show if it is connected. Lightburn, and not even the controller board, knows whether ot not it is plugged in. Click on that icon and turn it off (disenable?) when the window opens up.
I had the same thought—the issue is most likely that Rotary Mode is still enabled in LightBurn. Just disable Enable Rotary in the Rotary Setup window, then reset the machine if needed. LightBurn doesn’t actually know whether the rotary is physically connected.
The Rotate switch you show is to allow or lock rotation of items on your workspace (your artwork). The rotary enable switch is in the Rotary settings dialog shown below. It shows that it’s enabled on your system by the green mark on the rotary in the top toolbar in the image you posted in post #3.
If you click on that rotary icon, it will open the settings dialog.
It looks to be disabled. You are connected to the laser? Do you have a manual rotary switch on the laser?
is the laser turned on? It must be on and connected to show current settings and change settings
Yes the laser is on, I don’t want the rotary to be on.
Let’s start over. What exactly is happening?
When I attempt to laser engrave a flat piece of metal the image is very long, like up and down and and has spaces/lines in the image/wording. It started happening after I had just got done engraving some tumblers so I thought maybe my machine thinks its still trying to rotate the image, but maybe I am mistaken.
If I slow down the interval it is “normal”. When I speed it up, that is also when this spacing happens.
Hopefully the images help
Post a screenshot of your entire lightburn screen with your project loaded and the laser window and cuts/layers window showing. Then open the preview window and post that also.
I had to do some conversion because i don’t use inches for control units. Anyhow, your interval is almost double what I normally run. Try changing your interval to .0039.
Did you make any changes to your machine settings when you hooked up the rotary?
I always have ran and was told to run the intervals at the 0.070. When I do change it to 0.0039 its does look normal just runs super slow.
I did not make any changes when I hooked up the rotary, other than maybe the speed and power, but I do that with any thing I engrave depending on the material I am using.
I think the issue is you are using .070in, where you should be using .07mm.
.07mm = 386 lines per inch
.07in = 14.29 lines per inch
With that low of a LPI number you will have gaps. The best thing i can recomend is do a line interval test for yourself so you know what your machine is capable of.
That is because it is scanning 386 times in one inch vs only 14 times. Your laser beam is only so big, so it has to scan in a way that the next line touches the previous line otherwise wou will have gaps. Understand?
Also, I recommend working in metric control units. It’s the language your machine speaks and what the majority of users do. You can still do your designs in inches, but run your speed at xxx mm/sec and your interval in mm. You set this in Machine Settings (Wrench & Screwdriver Icon). this is how I recommend you set it. Having the link switch unchecked allows you to design in inches, but the machine controls are in metric.
I will try all that. and I did just turn down the intervals and it worked great! Thank you so much!