I have recently developed this “wave” texture in my etching instead of a nice smooth etch. (see pic) The only thing I have done is enable Scanning Offset Adjustment because I had fuzzy edges to my etch. That got corrected nicely but now this! Does that have anything to do with the waves? How do I get the waves out and back to nice smooth even etch?
I have a Monport 80W CO2 laser engraver
Thank you for any help
Any mechanical machine with moving parts must have clearance between the parts, this clearance naturally causes the machine to have some backlash.
On a Ruida, it handles overscan, so backlash is handled by the software. Technically this can be handled by the Ruida, but I wouldn’t adjust same type changes in two places. They will likely interact.
My first thought is your overscan table values are not correct…
The other option is to turn off overscan adjustment and bi-directional scan operation.
The job will take twice as long as it’s only lasing in one direction.
Dear Debbie Sweet
Hi i have seen this today actually i was thinking it was my user error.
I think its my belts on my cheap machine and running to fast.
Regards
Mark
I looked in Device settings and can not find overscan adjustment and bi-directional scan operation .Could you please direct me to these? Thank you
PS I turned of the Scanning Offset Adjustment and didn’t make any difference - I was just curious. Thank you again
Your belts may share the behavior that Russ Sadler observed in his video series on something he defines as ‘Curtains’. Basically, the belt lifts away from the pulley as it rotates because the tooth shape doesn’t offer constant velocity behavior.
I don’t think it’s a curtains issue as that leaves lines for every tooth on the belt and are square with the gantry, since that’s what’s creating them…
I’ve seen something similar, but can’t think of the fix… 
I have his curtain fix…
:smile_cat
This is only a 2 month old machine (still fighting with Monport that they sold me a lemon) so I hope it wouldn’t be belts.
But here’s the 2 windows of my machine that you sent of yours.
I already had the settings in the table and nothing changed from being ‘enabled’ and being disabled. So now the next window. I see how to turn off the BI DIRECTIONALbut please look at my other settings - should they be changed (LINE INTERVAL & LINE PER INCH)? If this adjustment nothing happens am I doomed to this engraving pattern? Do I need a tech to come and adjust other things?
Also while you have my pics - Back to the other window and the Z axis settings. I have one turned on. I reported to Monport that this laser (36" long x 24" bed) won’t let me engrave/cut beyond 21.5". My last laser (exact duplicate) let me go down to 23.5". They mentioned changing a Z setting which I couldn’t find anywhere in their crappy manual. Is this the area where I can change this problem or is it on the controller?
Thank you again for your advise
I suggest you re-evaluate your interval… Generally, the best resolution is your beam diameter.
If you have a 2" lens, it has a spot size of about 0.21mm, so with that as an interval, the best resolution would be 120.6 dpi. The scan interval of 0.21 would take almost 2.5 scans to cover the size of your beams damage. if this is needed, then that’s ok, but it’s generally not.
You speed is a bit high, I have a smaller machine, but I limit speeds to around 300mm/s… it’s easy to outrun the lps.
This video by Laser Everything is excellent with explaining how to find and set the proper interval for a job… This is done on a fiber, but the process is the same for any laser with any material.
Try the turning off bi-directional and see if it changes…
Thank you very much for the advise. I don’t know if you saw my last paragraph about the problem where I can’t engrave to the full bed size of 24" – and stops me at 21.5" instead. You don’t have anything selected in the Z axis section. I do – is that causing the restriction? I didn’t turn on this selected item. It was done by the ex-tech at Monport who was American and knew this machine very well.
Is this isn’t anything – how do I adjust so the gantry will go to almost to the 24’?
I didn’t respond about area, I like to handle one problem at a time. Sometimes it’s get confusing.
Have you checked that your Ruida have the right values for the bed size? This is set/checked via Edit → Machine Settings and should also be known to Lightburn…
