Scratching my head. I know there are fancy Z drive heads that follow the contour of an irregular surface. But what about a ‘known’ curved surface? Like the blade of a fan or the face of a pocket flask. Not something round you could chuck up in a rotary, but not flat enough to be engraved in the traditional sense on a CO2 laser.
I would imagine there might be something that could be programmed to move the bed in Z as the laser engraves like a 3D printer would, but I can’t seem to find anything even remotely close to it.
the beam spot is slightly slightly larger and less power, but it has a narrow beam so if the surface has a variation in height of a few mm , you can just treat the item as if it was flat.
rather than swap out the lenses , which is fiddly, i bought a second lens tube, and engraved it “4 inch lens” on the rotary ,so i can swap lenses in a few seconds.
Another “mod” suggestion is to place a 4” lens in the lower position in the lens holder (effectively increasing the gap between the laser head and the object). You will have to bore the hole of the cone wider to clear the beam and air assist will not be as effective (which isn’t a big deal for only engraving odd ball objects that you don’t need to cut).
The wider gap allows for safer clearance when the item being engraved has projections etc. This is very much the case when using the rotary (as sometimes the rotary itself becomes an obstruction)!
With good planning, you can also use some / a few Z moves between layers to adjust for gradual slopes if needed.
Unfortunately, Ruida controllers at this time do not support Z moves simultaneous to Laser On.