I’m running a 100w co2 laser with ruida controller. Have an order for some leatherette hat patches that I needed to match up to one a buddy of ours had done, just resize. I resized it, ran it under the settings I usually used for leatherette and regardless of what I seem to try I cant get it to come out the same. Lettering has noticeable shadow, especially on the “E”, and the borders around the RLH aren’t visible. I have adjusted speed and power, line per inch, even tried doing it as offset fill. I have attached pictures of the one I need to match and my “closest attempt” As I’m typing this I have set the feet on my laser (figuring it might just be the whole machine wobbling…) turns out that didn’t fix it either.
any help would be greatly appreciated! Don’t know if I’m having a settings issue or what. Had no issue running leatherette before and just started having this problem
Being it a CO2 it can be you need some scan offset
But… have you done this little test
disable bi-directional engraving
Does shadow go away completely?
if yes… Then you might have some some slack on your X axis belts or mechanics.
Worth giving it a once over
I’m not 100% sure. pretty new to the industry. My girlfriend purchased the laser to go along with her embroidery business and I’m figuring things out as I go. I have had pretty good success for a beginner so far. On this particular batch I have tried running it cross hatch, bi-directional and offset fill. Offset fill the shadow seems to be gone but I can see the laser path lines in the leatherette and even at super low power it burns through the material…
I am about to run another test at slower speed with the cross hatch option selected at one pass. Just reconfirmed the feet are set and the machine is level. Wish me luck! Thanks for the advice. forgive my ignorance is it pretty easy to tighten an axis belt? I’m sure I can google it and figure it out. Thanks for the timely reply!
I"m a goober. I literally just realized what you meant. running one now with bi-directional disabled. So if the shadow is gone I have slack on my x-axis belt?
Thanks again for the help! Shadow seems to be gone. I’lll either post up a new thread or do some youtubing and figure out how to go about tightening my x axis belt~!
Yes, I still either have a loose x axis belt or need to do a scanning offset adjustment!
I also work a full time job so this will allow me to get this order set and running while my gf is here working and I can do further diag and fixes tomorrow sometime!
If scan offset adjustment is off, it’s across the whole work piece, not in a couple select places…
The first image on the Lightburn documentation that @gilaraujo posted shows what happens, this is not what’s happening in your engraving… I also doubt it’s backlash which is what the scanning offset is for…
Some of the issues that impact creating a good suggestions, we make assumptions, such as speed/power/interval which may or may not be correct. We know you know, but we are guessing.
We also have to assume which axes is which… I’d assume X is running left/right, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s been rotated…
What intervals did you try on which patch?
IMHO, it looks burnt comparing the colors to the top patch… this could cause some of these… Next suspect is focus.
I think it will show it’s head again down the road a piece…
