Imaging distortion during engraving

Chinese brand 600x900 80W CO2 machine
RDC6445G(EC) Ruida Controller.
RDworks V8.01.40 (PC)
Lightburn: V0.9.04 (Mac) just updated
Connection: USB cable

I’m experiencing some distortion when engraving. I first noticed this in Lightburn. I switched over to RDworks and then it went away. I’m now experiencing the same issue in RDworks.

spd/pwr = 350/40

I’m also triggering the limit sensor on the X Axis. Its like the controller gets confused and starts trying to figure its self out as its engraving.
I’m new to this and is slowly working my way through and learning as i go. Not sure if my speed is too fast. I’m using the vendor/user settings that originally came with the machine. The machine cuts just fine.

is anyone familiar with this issue?

Thank you!

Does it happen at the same physical place on the machine, or are there any other commonalities you can think of between the jobs that failed?

The speed you’re running shouldn’t be an issue, especially with the simple graphics you’re cutting. If it was a finely dithered photo at that speed it could be a possible issue, but not with just a vector etch like that.

You mention that your triggering the limit sensor on the x axis, can you elaborate? in my experience triggering any limit switch during a job is not good.

It happens all over, it does not matter where i position it.

My work flow consits of designing in Ai then importing into lightburn. I then send to machine and process.

I was reading an earlier post about rotating images and how it affects re-sampling with pass through etc… I was moving the piece around in software for material positioning. However, i don’t think that should effect that right?

It didn’t necessarily trigger during the job. it was when i stopped the job due to the etching distorting. i noticed the limit sensor triggering when i would manually move the head with the keys. It was like origin was reset.

Hmm. I had a problem that looked kind of similar to that.
Sometimes (but not always) scanned patterns would come out skewed in the x direction. It was like with each scan line the pattern would move to the right slightly, like it was loosing (or gaining) one step with each scan line. It was more likely to do it after the machine had been on for a while and was fully warmed up, but even then it only did it once in a while.
I finally cured it by turning the acceleration down some and haven’t seen the problem since then.

Perhaps give that a try. Go into the machine settings and nudge the engraving acceleration down about 20% and see if that helps.

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If this design is vectors then pass-through has no effect whatsoever - that’s only for images. Hank’s suggestion is a good one - it’s possible that your acceleration setting is too high and you’re skipping steps when it changes direction. This won’t happen all the time, or in consistent locations.

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Ok, I’ll try that out. I’ll report back with the results.

Thanks!

Just wanted to follow up on this issue. After doing a bit more research it ended up being a loose gear. The gear was slipping on the X axis, stepper motor assembly. I guess new machine loose screws etc. I just went through and tightened everything up. Just did a test run and it appears to be good.

I also went back in and lowered the engraving speed a little for good measure. Still working through the learning phase but i’m getting there.

Thank you all for your help!

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