I’ve done my first acrylic rastering on the Thunder. The top red layer and black print from my protective sheeting is bleeding into my bottom white layer. Can anyone give me advise on how to prevent this? I played with varying speed and power settings, but it basically came out the same regardless.
Also, where is the setting to make it scan from bottom to top instead of the default top to bottom?
I use lower power and two passes to get a clean engraving on my laser. One pass never seems to get all of the top layer off. This is especially true of the red/white and black/white sign plastic. It could also be residue cast off from the raster process. Definitely do a bottom to top during the raster.
@talkers, can you remind us where the bottom-to-top setting is on the Thunderlaser?
Thanks Cary. Can you tell me how to set it for 2 passes?
I just run the job 2 times.
Have a great day,
Cary Fleming
Laser Wonders
UPIC: LsrWndrs
I suspect it is avail on the Thunder, but do not know where it would be set. I’ll look this weekend & ask the committee.
This was a huge problem with the Epilog laser I used to have at an old job. There was a smoke plume* that would contaminate everything as it passed. If red and black dust is coming out of that plume, it’s probably getting all in the grooves of the work piece!
*essentially vaporized plastic that would condense on the first surface it came near
I think I found it. It works in simulation. I’ll be at the Space to teach at 6pm, and will test on the machine then.
Thank you John. I’m hoping that will prevent my colors from bleeding when
I raster two layer acrylic.
It is possible to do bottom to top rastering. I will update the documentation tomorrow with the procedure.
I was unable to find the setting in the documentation on the laser committee page. Can you send me the link to it in case I’m not looking at the right document?
Under Main Menu>Config(S)>System Setting
the Default is to have the Laser Head Anchored in the upper Left.
To have it Raster bottom up, you need to change the laser head (and thus Anchor Point) to either the lower left or lower right. (I am not sure which is better)
Be sure to choose Anchor Point for your position.
2 notes.
Let me know please if this works for you.
cc: @lukeiamyourfather
I will try that shortly. Thank you.
IS there a way to send my job files from my own laptop while connected to the DMS WiFi?
That setting did work for reversing the direction; however, it did not help the top color of my 2 layer acrylic bleeding into the bottom layer.
That’s a bummer. Did you try 2 passes as Cary does? Ideally, the second would vaporize the bleed.
If you leave me some test material, I’ll work on it this weekend.
I did try two passes, didn’t really work.
I didn’t think to leave any, but yes, I’ll try and bring a sheet by and leave it for you. Thank you for helping.
I wonder if a different 2 color would be better. Did you try it on the Zing to compare?
You are welcome
I have an order in for 2-ply plastic (black on white) with Laser Bits and should be getting it in soon. I’ll test it out and see what settings I can figure out (most likely on the Zing cause my starting material isn’t very large).
Also, here’s an engraving best practices video for 2-ply Rowmark plastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9f8Y-MsB3o&t=1m45s (I set the time to when the narrator starts to talk about bottom up engraving and using two passes but do watch the whole video.)
-the purring dork
