I have a Boss rotary attachment on my Boss Laser and under Rotary Setup it asks for the object diameter. On a simple cylinder that’s a simple answer but on a tapered shape (see the attached image) what diameter should be used?
I shoot for something in the middle of the burn envelope along the X axis.
Does that make sense?
In the middle? I’m not sure that answers the question.
I can see that a quarter turn covers a lot more area at the top - larger diameter - than a quarter turn at the bottom - smaller diameter. It seems that the image has to be distorted - made smaller at the top - for it to come out as expected.
Then again, I’m only guessing.
You got it exactly right. There is distortion and I’m not sure there’s not too much you can do about it. That’s why I choose a diameter in the middle.
The area to be burned resembles a truncated cone exactly how you describe. So I try to choose a diameter that’s half the height of the cone.
(Pardon my crappy artwork)
I hope that makes better sense.
The location on the cone at which you determine diameter will be the only position in which the rotational distance will match your design.
What is your goal for the actual burn? What should it look like if you were looking at the cone while sitting on its base?
If your expectation is that it’s anything other than the top of the cone being narrower than the bottom of the cone then I expect yes, you’d have to distort the image to accommodate for it.
Ok, now I understand the choice of the middle.
As far as the distortion, if I take the ratio of the distance around the cone at the top and the bottom of the image and distort the image accordingly, use a diameter equal to where the center of the image will be on the piece it should result in the image being close to normal looking.
Will that work?
This will depend on your definition of normal.
Run a test. See how it goes.
If you have the software to distort the image, (never tried it in lightburn) this will help.
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Nice find Mike!
Been using that for years when I was using cut vinyl and a sand blaster for etching glasses and such.
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