Help with project etching duck calls

Woodshop
#1

Hi all,

I just wanted to give a shout out to all those who have helped me in the woodshop on my recent project. As some of you may have heard( literally) I am making a few duck calls for friends and am in the final stages of coating polishing etc of the barrels (top part of the call). It has been a great learning experience using different woods and really getting a design I like ( Big shout out to Tom and Johnny).

All this said, I was wondering if the MS has a way to laser etch a very fine font or design on the calls I am making? I was told there was a rotational device for doing cylinders and etching wine glasses etc. but it was broken? I want to customize each call for the individuals I am making them for and include a design about the size of a penny. Also does this work on metal? I know how to do the design in VCarve just wondering if the cylindrical etch device could do the job or if anyone has any knowledge they could share to help.

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#2

@michaelb can speak to this, but the rotary is working at least on blitzen

#3

I lied, we tried at the last maintenance day and it had the same stretching issues as Donner and thunder.

If we get the ok for the Fusion Pro, we’ll have a rotary that works well, but that’s gonna be a month or two.

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What is the Rotary Status for the laser?
#4

Is the stretching something that can be accounted for by telling the program to not travel as much? I don’t know what it’s doing currently but the first(?) time it broke, it was stretching by about 25% IIRC and so we told the program to just travel by 75% and it turned out fine.

#5

Seems to be that the new stepper driver is set (fixed from factory) for a different number of steps/revolution than the original. So when the controller tells the motor to turn 10deg it actually turns 20deg. There is a software setting for steps/revolution, but it only seems to make a difference when the laser feels like it (it did a few weeks ago, but not this weekend).

Y’all are welcome to try it out and see what you can do. I’m sure scaling or changing the diameter will work, but I don’t want to declare it fixed until it works like it should. If you can use it as is to do your work though go for it, let us know what happens.

#6

Is it exactly twice the rotation?

#7

I didn’t measure it this time, it’s likely that it’s 2x.