Laser Rotary Attachment
PLEASE NOTE: You may NOT use this machine prior to being checked out on it.
Owner/Loaner: Asheville Makers
Donated By: N/A
Serial Number: N/A
Make/Model: Cloudray
Arrival Date: December 2018
Manual: N/A
Working Condition: yes
Contact: Zak S.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER plug in or unplug the rotary attachment or the y-axis motor when the machine is powered on. To use the rotary attachment, set the following parameters on the laser by opening LightBurn and going to Edit/Machine Settings:
- Under Rotary Parameters, set Enable Rotary to True
- Under Y Axis Settings, set Enable Homing to False
- Under Y Axis Settings, set Max Speed to 75 rather than 500
- Under Y Axis Settings, set Max Acceleration to 100 rather than 10,000
Then click on Write. If you just click OK, changes will not be saved.
Next, POWER DOWN THE LASER CUTTER, unplug the y-axis motor, plug in the rotary attachment, and power the laser cutter up again.
In Lightburn, go to Tools/Rotary Setup. Click the Enable Rotary checkbox. Next, measure your stock (diameter or circumference) in the center of where your image will be etched, and enter that value in either the Object Diameter or Circumference box. This will let the software automatically scale your image to adjust for the difference between the roller diameter and your workpiece diameter.
Next, remember that the top of your stock is facing right, so you may need to rotate your image 90 degrees in Lightburn to make sure the orientation is the way you would like it on your piece.
Finally, if your stock is not perfectly cylindrical (e.g. a tapered pint glass), you will also need to scale the width of your image. The simplest way to do this is to measure the diameter in the center of the area where you will engrave your image. If the stock diameter at the rollers is d1, and the stock diameter in the center of the etching area is d2, scale the width of your image by d1/d2. So, for example, if your stock has a 4“ circumference where it rests on the rollers and a 3” circumference in the center of your etching area, you will want to widen your image by a factor of 4/3. You can easily do this in Lightburn, but remember that if you have rotated your image, then you will want to scale the HEIGHT in Lightburn.
For larger images, you may want to distort the width of the image gradually across the entire image. This can be done using the Envelope feature in Inkscape.
When you are done, change all of these settings back to their original values and Write them (other than the Workpiece Diameter or Circumference). Also change the following:
- change the y-axis keypad acceleration to 4,500
- set the cut parameters max acceleration to 2,000, the idle acceleration to 2,000, and the min acceleration to 400
- set the engraving parameters Y acceleration to 10,000
Then turn off the machine, unplug and remove the rotary attachment, and raise the bed back up so that the next person can use the laser for cutting or engraving flat stock.
Settings: I found a speed of 100 and power of 20 with 300 dpi seemed to work well on the pint glasses I was using to test the rotary. You may also want to wipe your piece with a wet piece of denim (or paper towel) to remove any tiny bits of glass still clinging to the piece.
