I was thinking about engraving a large circular plate with my galvo laser. The radius of the plate fits into my working area, so my idea is to move a rotary in a vertical position and put the plate on it. (similar setup as when you run the “repeat marking”). The idea is to engrave one section (2deg) of the design, rotate the plate by 2deg, rinse repeat. So exactly what the normal rotary unit would do, but with a sector of a circle in each iteration.
Perfect alignment could be an issue, but is there a way to use Lightburn in that way?
If I understand you you don’t want repeat marking, you want one design spread out over the entire plate?
That may be tricky. I don’t believe there is a direct route, have to come up with a hack. Interested to hear a solution.
I have been shopping for a rotary for my Longer. I picked one, but not the one I think you want.
Some manufacturers make one that tilts back. I don’t know if any go to 90 degrees, but you can see where I am going with this… You might need to fabricate some custom grippers (diameter about 12" ?). Your overall height will be around 5" when done. But it is a path…
Good luck
It’s not about using a rotary table, it’s about a ‘pizza mode’ in which you engrave a small slice (2deg circular segment), rotate the table and repeat. The goal is to cover the full plate even though it does not fit into the working area.
I think it could work by transforming the image from a circle to a rectangle by treating it as polar coordinates and then using the angle of the (distance, angle)-pair as y-axis and the distance as x-axis. This will spread the center point to the whole y-axis, so I guess a texture that does not cover the center part of the disc will work best. (5.9. Polar Coordinates)
exactly. Is there already a feature request for that? I’ve been working on the automation of the print file generation for the last months and currently use the UDP-‘API’ to load new images. However it would be much nicer to have to be able to pass a directory of files and auto-increment them.
I don’t know, but track it down and I’ll vote.
So I’ve built a rather large rotary table, first problem tried with direct drive, too much rotational mass. Couldn’t get it to stop without skipping. Went to a 10:1 zero backlash worm drive unit, get good lockup but a lot of stress on the connection. Have to slow the acceleration way down. Accuracy fine for business cards, not sure how it would do slicing.
Ha!
Already as thin as I can go. Does it’s job, but just about maximum diameter for this type of application. Really need “Push the cards off the bottom of the stack” linear repeat instead of rotary repeat when more then this is needed.
Do you have any details in mind?