Piburn Grip Rotary and Omtech Engraving Wobbly

Hello I hope the hivemind here can help me. I cannot figure this out. I just bought a PiBurn Grip Rotary and have been trying to get it dialed in. I’ve used a lot of help of the forum to get myself to this point. However, no matter what setting I change, I cannot get this to engrave correctly. I am getting a wobbly engrave when it attempts curves. See attached pictures.

I changed the following settings also to try to slow everything down:

Idle Speeds (<25mm suggested, I have mine at 10)

Line Shift Speed (<25mm suggested, I have mine at 10)

Maximum Y Travel 9999

Maximum Y speed (<25mm suggested, I have mine at 10)

Could it be an issue with the piburn chuck motor itself? or my Y axis motor? Before hooking up the rotary, the Y axis worked fine.


What are the rotary settings? Do you have the steps per rotation correct?

Yes according to the piburn manual they should be 5,000. I also confirmed this with the dip switches on my machine.

There is a lot of mass in the tumbler. How fast are you driving the axis? Try slowing it down by 50%.

Also increase the overscan by 100%.

Line mode is much harder to get nice on a rotary, fill mode is much preferred.

I am driving everything super slow.

How do I change the overscan? Googling shows that with my Ruida controller, there is no setting for overscan as the controller automatically handles it

What are your fill settings? Here is a screen of mine that works well. BTW I’m running the same rotary with a 60w Omtech.

I just ran this file with your exact fill settings

I’m out of ideas. This was earlier.


Well thanks for trying. Let me ask you this, does your rotary spin back and forth while the x axis burns, or does you rotary just advance one move at a time as it engraves from right to left

Just 1 step at a time.

You don’t have flood fill turned on in advanced do you?

No, flood fill is not on.

Are your rotary well seated in place?

Yes it’s solid. It’s almost as if the piburn motor is not turning smoothly.

Been following this thread and it looks like you’ve done most thing correctly. I’m assuming you’re using the X axes to do most of the work and the Y axes only move at your interval… In simple terms you’re scanning the length of the mug/cup, not spinning it back and forth. The only other thing that can cause this to my knowledge is something is loose.

I have a PiBurn 3.0, no chuck, just rubber rollers driving the mug. In my case many of the Y operations were slowed down including the jump-off speed, which I don’t think you mentioned. It’s usually better to specify the actual variable you changed, not a translated equivalent. Such as line shift speed, which isn’t a specified setting, although I assume you mean acceleration of the Y axes? Jump-off speed is how fast it will initially operate, so mine is very low also. I have a machine settings file for using the rotary where all of these values are set, then reloaded when I take the rotary off the machine.

I hope you saved the original Ruida configuration, so you can easily go back to it. Might want to save the modified one also…

This is mine, it’s motor is to the left, hard to see as it’s black. When I first got it the image was mirrored, since I was more in a hurry, I swapped the direction of the rotary until I got around to re-wiring it for the correct phase inputs.

Since you are using a chuck model, most of these settings really don’t apply assuming the chuck isn’t loosing traction. The main reasoning behind the slower speeds is usually so the item doesn’t slip when you attempt to move it… with a chuck that’s highly unlikely. That mug probably less mass than your Y gantry with it’s drag chain plus the head and drag chain on the X axes… So your default setting should work. I doubt changing these is going to make much of a difference.

I have both a chuck (with the fiber) and a wheeled rotary (PiBurn) I got for the co2. I use them interchangeably with either machine… I’ve use the chuck on the OMTech co2 machine and the PiBurn on the fiber… same game. Steps/rotation changes as does mode, but they both work properly on either machine.

I also assume when you use the test button in the gui setup, that it rotates one complete rotation and back…? Even if your steps/rotation are off, it would result in a stretched or compressed image on the mug, so I think you’re setup properly. My PiBurn has a belt to the driving roller, which is a 2.5 ratio. I can’t see yours well enough but it appears as the motor drives the chuck directly, meaning, in my case it would be 2000 steps/rotation. However I’d expect some serious distortion in the image if you were off that much, so I’m assuming you’re values are correct.

@JimNM there is no overscan adjustment with a dsp unit, such as a Ruida, this is handled by the hardware based on acceleration values.

Sorry to hear you’re having issues, most of my experience has been very good with PiBurn, but again, I’d ask the factory for help in a resolution to this… I hate to say, I don’t see anything that would cause this. You interval is rather small as most co2 have at least a 0.20mm spot size, that’s something you have to figure out with the type of mug and coating.

I’d suggest you contact PiBurn with a link to this thread, if anyone has a good idea about it, it’s likely the manufacturer.

Sorry for little to no help here, that’s why I suggest a note to the manufacturer.

Good luck – we’re waiting for the fix to be revealed to us, so will be waiting on your replay :face_with_spiral_eyes:

:smile_cat:

Thank you for the lengthy reply. I have the y axis jumpoff speed set to 20 mm/sec2. And yes when I hit the test rotary in lightburn, it does a complete circle and returns to the original spot.

I did email Lens Digital and they replied very quickly with an initial step to try. Unfortunately, that did not fix it. I will continue to seek help from them and update the thread to see if anyone else has a suggestion to try.

1 Like

Update:

I setup a roller rotary that I received with my Omtech Laser. I was able to achieve a great engrave with that rotary.


Just an idea - Can you try the tumbler slower speed and without the rollers?

Update:

Thank you very much to Lens Digital for diagnosing the problem and then offering a solution. It turns out, the Pi-Burn motor was a 3-phase motor and it was not compatible with my OmTech laser. They provided a new motor.

I have received the new motor and did my first test. Much better results. I am still getting a ‘stair stepped’ looking engrave on the edges.

Anyone know what that could be? As you can see on my earlier picture using the roller rotary, the edges were smooth.

Try my earlier settings. Especially the line interval.