Hello all,
I am new to using a rotary tool. I understand that these things are difficult to setup for the first time based on all the forum results. I ran though testing and found the steps per rotation is 6100. The circumference of my object is 11.24690 inches. When I try to line out a rectangle on my object that is 11.24690"x.25" it works great in Absolute Coordinates mode. But when I switch over to User Origin mode I get the Frame Slop Error on the riudia controller. In my screen shot, I even reduced the rectangle to 1.5"x.25" and I still get the same error. I have an OMTech red and back 100 watt Co2 with a 28"x20" bed. Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?
Here is the solution:
Thank you for the speedy response!
Yes, I did review that posting. This is why I tested making my rectangle smaller to only 1.5 inches high by 1/4 inch wide. My laser head is smack dab right in the middle of my 28 inch by 20 inch bed and I still get the frame slop error. There should be plenty of travel for a 1.5 inch rectangle if I’m starting in the center. It would then only have to travel 3/4 of an inch either side. Am I still understanding this wrong?
Have you tried Current Position instead? You tell us everything except what the User Origin setting is.
Did you position the head and press origin on the machines console ?
Your setup as a roller type rotary, so the object diameter doesn’t matter to the machine. You can use it to compute the working area withing Lightburn.
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Yes, “Current Position” produces the same Frame Slop Error.
Did you position the head, then press origin on the machines console?
If you don’t do this, it won’t work.
Yes, I have jogged the head to my starting point, pressed the Origin button on the controller. Still, same issue. I only provided the circumference so everyone understood why I was trying to engrave a 11 inch rectangle. Which should fit on my bed, but not even a 1.5 inch tall rectangle will when using User Origin or Current Position.
The machine thinks you are in a different place.
If it works with absolute coordinates, it should work fine with user origin.
You mention is doesn’t work with a 1.5" rectangle, is this 1.5" rectangle 11" in it’s other dimension? One side of a rectangle doesn’t tell us very much in these circumstances.
When I do mugs, with user origin, I select the center left as the job origin. This represents the bottom/center of the mug. With many mugs, there is a manufacturers identifier in the center and I use that to align the mug.
First time with same setup you need to press origin, as long as you don’t change anythings position, you only need to do it once.
Have you tried using ^A to select all of the objects, then the zoom to frame selection 
to show all the selected parts. It may be you have some thing hanging out there in your source file.
Do you mind posting the source?
As mentioned in my original post, the rectangle has always been 1/4" wide. I started with it at 11" tall because that was the circumference of my item so I can find out how many steps my rotary tool would take for one rotation, then that 11"x1/4” rectangle should meet precisely end to end. This worked using Absolute Coordinates but the laser jumped to a different start point then what I wanted. Not that I’m trying use User Origin or Current position, I keep getting a slop error. This is where I stated in my original post that I shrunk the rectangle down from 11" to 1.5" (never changing the width) and I still receive the same slop error.
Yes, I have checked to see if there are any other objects in the lightburn work area and there are not.
What else might I be doing wrong?
Do you mind posting your source ? …
I’d like to see how you have it positioned in the work area in Lightburn.
You seem to know what you’re doing so I’m throwing out conflicting information.
I’ve seen this a lot and it’s always boiled to a misunderstanding of the way it’s coordinate system works. And it’s usually something simple
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “…my source…” I’m currently at work and not at my shop where the laser is. Does the screenshot in the original post not help?
I hope it’s simple. I know I’m doing something wrong, missing a step somewhere.
Does your machine have 11+" of travel in the Yaxis?
When starting from the center of the bed, and using User Origin or Current position, I would assume I’d have 5.5" of travel to make the 11"x.25" rectangle either direction in the Y axis on a 20"x28" bed.
Ok, big machine. I just wanted to eliminate computed overtravel with the rotary connected. The rotary is capable of infinite travel in the Yaxis. Not sure how the Ruida handles this, but it was an idea.
Something you need to look at. What is the Y position on your controller? If your Y position does not make sense to the controller when you send your file you will get this error. What I mean is if your Y position reads near 0 and your origin in lightburn is near 500 with the graphic going towards 0, the controller “knows” there is not enough room to run the project. Even though there is no limit to the travel of your rotary, your machine doesn’t know that.
Try this, if you use the center of graphic for origin, jog your rotary until the controller reads a Y position of 250 or thereabouts. If you use the bottom origin, rotate until it reads near 500 and if you use a top origin rotate it until it reads near 0. See if that solves your issue.
Now, if you start the machine with the rotary installed and hit escape to stop the homing process, the machine doesn’t know where anything is and you shouldn’t get the error.
It really doesn’t have infinite travel, it’s controlled by the controller and once the value of steps in controller have rolled over, it’s location is lost.
The rotary is just mapping of the working areas to the rotary. You don’t get a size change of the machine doing this, the Ruida still uses it’s workspace limits.
If you are starting on the edge of the work area (where the rotary current location) it’s likely that you could generate that error.
You could use your X and Y positioning to move to the center of the workspace as defined by your X and Y values in the machines console.
Don’t know if it would help, but your .lbrn2 file would be nice…
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Rotary Test.lbrn2 (3.1 KB)
Here is the requested LB file.
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So @thelmuth - you got me onto this. The Y axis on the controller was at 0. And that makes perfect sense, I cannot start in the middle of my project and expect it to travel in the negative, right? So I bumped it up to 68mm (randomly large enough for a 1.5" rectangle) on the Y axis and it worked just fine. Such a simple solution, thank you!!
Now, I’m assuming I just need to make sure that the controller shows that I have enough distance to travel for each project I try to engrave and if it does not, then I just need to job my Y axis to the center of dimension
of whatever project I am doing, then I can place my item under the laser head where I want to start engraving. Is that sound about right or am I missing anything else?
That’s pretty much it. I generally do my rotary work with a lower right origin at top of tumbler and jog my Y axis to something in the 450-475 range. I have the same size bed as you. If I do happen to need a center origin I jog Y to around 250.
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