Traced image cuts fine with line but is angled with line and fill

It’s an easy enough thing to test either way - Go to Edit > Machine Settings, then unfold the Vendor Settings at the bottom, and under Y Axis Settings, change the “PWM Rising Edge Valid”. It’s either true or false, so write down what it is now and set it to the other one, then click “Write”. If it doesn’t change anything on the output, put it back to what it was.

I assume you aren’t changing anything regarding your X axis when using the rotary? Like, it’s not going through the same wiring switch or anything? Have you double checked that the step / direction pins are connected to the right things?

The rotary was used for both the engraves on the cup.

And yet the rotary is laying so the x axis is right to left and the cup rolls towards me or away from me.

Same results. Nope not changing anything on the x axis. I unplug the machines y axis and plug in the rotary to that.

And yes the wiring has been confirmed at the plug.

Have you tried running the same kind of job with RDWorks to see if the issue happens there?

No…I don’t think it has a trace function does it??

You should be able to export from LightBurn to AI and let RDWorks build the job from that (you’ll have to set the settings). You could also try exporting the RD file from LB and just using “Ufile Output” in RDWorks to send it, to eliminate that as a possible failure point too.

Working on it now.

Well it appears I do have a work around by using RDworks.

That looks like possibly another case of “excessive acceleration”.
I had a similar looking problem when I first set my machine up. Sometimes it would do it, sometimes not.
What appeared to be happening is that it would lose 1 step with each successive scan line, so the image became skewed like that.
Try turning the acceleration down about 20% and see if it helps.

Hmm, I think we had a similar conversation a few days ago with erratic engraving on brass cartridges.
Did you turn down the acceleration some to fix that?

Hank I did and posted I did…so that acceleration is causing this in Lightburn but not RDworks.

Oz do you want me to send you the file?

Yes, please - Click “Save UFile” in RDWorks and send me that, and click “Save RD File” in LightBurn and send that too. I’ll compare them and see if there’s anything strange.

Ok…give me about 5 mins. Where do I send it?

developer at lightburnsoftware dot com

You should have them any minute.

Hank…the accel was changed from 8000 to 6400 and the work was rotated 90 degrees.

The files you sent - the settings aren’t the same.

  • In LightBurn the power is 10% min, 50% max, in RDWorks it’s 90% min, 90% max
  • In LightBurn you have uni-directional, in RDWorks it’s bi-directional
  • In LightBurn the speed is 15.0mm/sec, in RDWorks it’s 16.7mm/sec
  • You have air assist enabled in RDWorks, but not LightBurn, and the intervals are different (probably 0.042mm in LightBurn, and 0.1mm in RDWorks)

Can you check the RDWorks job to see if all of this is right? You showed a couple screen shots where you said the job is set to 1mm/sec, but neither file shows that.

Can you also turn on debug logging in LightBurn, and then right-click the “Devices” button, then click “Stop”, then quit LightBurn and send me the LightBurnLog.txt file in your documents folder? Your RDWorks file has some slight differences in a couple of the commands, and I’d like to see if your hardware has a different version number that I could use to key off of. Do you know which version of RDWorks you’re using?

(sorry for the barrage of questions, but it’s not possible for me to own every flavor of controller out there)

These are the settings I have.

I had changed speeds at various times throughout the day and tested to see if that would help the slanted out put. It changed nothing.

The version of Rdworks is 8.01.11

How do I use the debugging? I have it enabled now.

  1. Wow.
    I don’t know what size bed your machine has as it’s not in your profile, but my 500 x 700 has trouble with acceleration over 5000mm/s^2. It was at 6200 to start with and that was clearly too much. At 5000 I only had occasional trouble and only when the machine has been on quite a while. Hot steppers make a little less torque than cold steppers.
    I run it at 4500mm/s^2 now

My opinion (and it’s only that) is that you should try reducing the Engraving Parameters X&Y acceleration down to 4000 mm/s^2 and also reduce it to that in “X Axis Settings” and “Y Axis settings”.
Maybe it will help, maybe it won’t but it’s cheap and painless to try and eliminates that possibility.
If that works then you can nudge it back up a little at a time until you find a happy spot.

Hank how do I use debugging in lightburn?