I have an OMTech AF2028 80W laser with a Ruida RDC6442G controller. I am using the 4 wheel rotary to engrave some initials on a tumbler. When the job is about 1/16" from finishing it glitches and messes up the engraving (fortunately it happened when I was testing it out with painters tape).
Here are pictures of the two instances it occurred.
The first image is when I had the scan angle set to 0 degrees (ran job from bottom to top) and the second image is when I set the scan angle to 180 degrees (ran job from top to bottom).
I check over the image in Lightburn and previewed the job and everything looked good. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m pretty new to laser engraving, however, I have engraved 10-12 other tumbler jobs and this is the first time I’ve experienced this issue.
That looks very much like a USB communication glitch, rather than a mechanical twitch, because the displacements aren’t permanent.
If you’re using Start to transmit & begin jobs at once, use Send to store them in the controller’s flash file system, then select that file and poke the machine’s Run button. If When a job misbehaves, Run it again: if it misbehaves the same way, then the file has an error due to a communication glitch.
Ethernet connections seem much more resistant to data errors, so switching from USB will be a Good Idea. The doc covers most of the territory:
This extensive discussion describes a DHCP gotcha in grisly detail:
Are you rotating the mug and scanning from top to bottom with each pass? It looks like the fill is going around the mug, meaning you’re not scanning with the X axes as is the norm.
Usually these are set and the Y axes is used for the rotary. Is this what you’re doing?
One of the issues with roller rotaries are they have a tendency to slip. On my 6442g, I slow down all the Y acceleration values to single digits. The problem is the mass of the object starting and accelerating may require more traction to the wheels.
