Rotatory oddness (random misalignment)

LightBurn Software Questions
1

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong place. I am new to the forum and engraving.

I have a 50w co2 Chinese engraver. Blue and white, believe it is a omt. I have a roller style rotary. Both laser and rotar were bought used. Initially had issues with the rotar in which it would just sputter back and fourth, maybe rotating just 1/4 inch I each direction. I retired the connector and got it to work. I might still have some wires reversed as I have to flip the images I want to burn or they are backwards.

This is not the real issue I am having though.

I am burning on small long skinny objects (drum sticks) and having odd intermittent issues.

I realize a chuck would be better for my need but I can’t afford one right now so trying to get by with the roller style.

I am having an issue in which I can draw a rectangle that is the circumstance of stick and get the ends of the rectangle to touch, or essentially I believe I have the rotation test/steps/rotator settings correct.

However when I put text at one end of the rectangle the text looks like it’s climbing up hill at a 30 degree angle. I was pretty sure that the burned object was slipping on the rollers. I have found ways in which to add weight to the object I am burning on, and this seemed to have been a good temp solution.

However I am still getting odd random miss alignment of parts of my burns. By this I mean just a few letters will be out Of place or the entire burn will. Appear as if it’s shiftng and ends up a weird mess.

I have my rotator set to 2960 (trial and error), and measured the rollers with calipers. Using a Mac connected via Ethernet (directly, no WiFi or router, switches etc in the path).

I am using very low power, max in the low 20s and min power in the mid teens. And the speed I have been using 200 max down to below 100.

I am sure I am not providing enough details here, so please let me know what I can provide if anyone can help.

Also I will try to upload a picture.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

2

No one’s replied so… I don’t have one of these, so no experience, but… IMHO

You mean like it’s slipping on the y axes, randomly?

I would ‘assume’ it’s slipping. You have some ‘speed’ limits you can set in the Ruida that may impact this. These are in ‘edit → machine settings → engraving parameters’

Y acceleration (mm/s^2)
Line shift speed (mm/sec)

The second sounds interesting… both may be applicable :slight_smile:

I have some lens tubes I’d like to engrave with the lens and nozzle distance. So I’m in the market myself for a rotary.

Make sure you save your original and mods in the machine settings, allows you to reload a different set of parameter for when you using or not using the rotary. If you modify it…

Good Luck :smiley_cat:

3

Hey thanks for taking a minute to reply.

Yes I think it’s slipping, but not 100% sure. As I mention I can get a perfect rectangle to be engraved, but it’s text that is a total mess. I added a bunch of weight to the object I am trying to engrave, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I was wondering if the number of steps might be off, so I started adjusting them. Here is the weird part. If I put the steps to 750, and test the rotor (using the test button in the rotor pop up box) I get exactly one rotation. But if I try to engrave something it ends up being like 1/4 of the correct size.

I tried adjusting the acceleration settings you mentioned but it doesn’t seem to make a difference either.

4

Here’s a list of activity on this site about rotary issues. Maybe that 1/4 scale is a known problem. The link searches for how to setup the number of steps… :slight_smile:

Good luck :slight_smile:

5

This is worth review: Rotary Setup - LightBurn Software Documentation

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