Engraving Quality

Questions, Suggestions, Tips, Etc

Engraving Quality

Postby andrewblanejr » Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:40 am

Hi Guys,

I recently purchase a Super Deluxe 40W Hobby Laser from Full Spectrum Laser. Super easy setup, super sturdy build quality, great support, and mostly great results...EXCEPT: when engraving wide areas vertical alignment becomes unreliable. I have a 4 x 4 grid of business cards (intended for acrylic) laid out in Adobe Illustrator and if i try to engrave a whole 4x4 grid they dont come out straight. I am currently working around this issue by engraving a 1 x 4 "collumn" of these cards at a time and them doing 3 more 1x4 collumns to finish off the 4x4 grid that fills my work area. This is a crappy workaround since i have to constantly stop and start the laser. 4 times for the front, 4 times for the back, and then 1 more time on front for some aditional vector lines, and then again to cut out the individual cards. AH! Anyways I wanted to see if anybody here was using a DSP or FSE controller card on your 2.x and what sort of wide engrave quality your resuls have? Below is a dropbox link to a bunch of XPS files that show my business card design and also an attached JPEG showing the engraving quality issues (ie lines not straight). FSE has been responsive in troubleshooting this but has suggested that this may be an inherent limitation in their 40W product. I still have a few more days left to retun the sucker if there is a better solution out there. Any guidance or advice is GREATLY appreciated!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20703296/BCards.zip

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20703296/crooked%20lines.jpg (this picture shows the crooked lines, but my other results are even worse, some lines are not just crooked but bent and slanted..)

/Andrew
Attachments
Picture01.jpg
crooked lines.jpg
see crooked vertical lines on the right card
Last edited by andrewblanejr on Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby bdring » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:06 am

What do they say? I would suspect something is not smooth or tight on one of the axes. It looks like to mirrors are moving/vibrating when they are not supposed to. Does it feel smooth when it runs?
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby andrewblanejr » Mon Aug 01, 2011 4:45 pm

They had me go through lots of troubleshooting steps. Loosened belts...made it worse. Tightened gradually...incrementally...went all the way to the tightest and still not fixed. Tried across 3 or 4 versions of their RetinaEngrave software, same problem. Then we started taking parts off the gantry (i think that is what it is called, the laser head), removed the red dot laser and air assist to decrease whiplash...still not fixed. Henry suggested it may be an inherent limitation of the 40W "hobby" product and that maybe i should consider the 60W pro laser product. I finally got him to agree to run a copy of my files on oe of his 40W at the shop and compare. I may have to drive to Las Vegas, NV to either have them repair this thing, show me how to fix it, or return it all together. Maybe i should just build a 2.x. How long do you think it woudl take me to procure and build from the point where i bought all the parts? Any chance one of you guys want to run my "All Front.xps" file through an engrave process (via DSP) and see if it comes out straight? I'm really going crazy having to do sheets on business acrylic business cards in 9 different steps.
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby TLHarrell » Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:26 pm

I have run into a couple small issues with my FSE 40 watt unit as well. I've managed to find workarounds pretty well for them.

First issue I've had is the controller taking lines that are close together and merging them. On a very small model box beam with diagonal bracing, it merged the outer cut with the edge of the triangular cutouts. I was able to solve it by making the interior cuts first (different color) so the two items being merged were segregated.

I've had the straying issue with setting up business cards too. For what you're doing, I'd recommend converting all the raster stuff to one big .jpg of 4x4 cards, then vector cut after. See if that works out. It'd be less messing around and aligning.
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby andrewblanejr » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:05 pm

I could convert it all to vector, but the final result won't look anything like the engraved version. The fonts need to be "filled" in with engraving. Alignment was difficult to figure out at first with this two-sided piece, but i finally figured out that if you start with a larger peice of acrylic, define 1 inner box, then put the cards in the inner box, you get pretty reliable results. engrave, cut the "inner box", flip that peice over without moving the larger acrylic sheet. engrave again, and then cut the individual cards. The real issue is the poor quality of the engraving when attempting to do the whole sheet or anything more than 1 card wide. so ive resorted to engraving them in collumns, but its tooo time consuming...i need a laser that can reliably engrave the whole sheet.
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby r691175002 » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:49 pm

It is really just a limitation of the mechanics of the laser cutter. Things bend and stretch, I suspect the true accuracy of the machines we are building (and similar such as the FSE you have) is in the 0.005-0.010" range which is visible. The issue isn't as visible when vectoring because of the spacing between the cuts but it still exists.

For better accuracy you need to tighten the belts, reduce friction, reduce weight and reduce any forces applied to the carriage (for example the cable carrier or air assist). You can also replace certain parts for higher rigidity.

I suspect you can do better with some tinkering but true accuracy will always cost money.
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby andrewblanejr » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:11 pm

the crooked lines i am getting seem to be off by quite a bit more than those tolerances. See additional pics attached.

I Should add that i am engraving at low speeds. "10%" right now, and even lower before...still deformed either way.
Attachments
Picture01.jpg
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby fullspeceng » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:46 am

Looked like belt tension was a bit loose or sloppy X bearing (both user fixable/replaceable). We will direct swap the laser if it's not working and the user can't adjust it to 100%.

Worked 100% on our demo unit in house (see attached).
Attachments
IMG_1493 (Small).JPG
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Re: Engraving Quality

Postby naPS » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:01 am

We just tried it using his RE card on my 2.x build, and we were able to reproduce the results. Something is amiss. He has the acrylic and wood that we cut, I'm sure he'll be posting pictures soon.
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