Another diamond drag question.

[ca.280]

Maybe I'm expecting too much. If I angle my design on a piece of acrylic (corner to corner) to maximize the size,
available instead of completely horizontal, things, especially text, will not stay aligned. Is this normal??
Also any recommendations for microstep settings on the drivers when hatching text?? Thanks

[TReischl]

A picture of what you are having a problem with would help.

No idea what you are talking about when you say things do not stay aligned.

Also, why do you think you might want to change the microstepping of your motors? And how would that be related to your issue?

[adze_cnc]

I have to agree with TReischl about being in the dark.

The only thing I can think of is that if you are hatching at 45 degrees and you rotate your project 15 degrees without changing the hatching angle then yes it will look odd.

But that’s the thing it would be up to you to change the hatch angle to 60 degrees. Your original 45 plus the rotated 15 degrees. You know what you want the program doesn’t.

[ca.280]

red bull 2.crv

(919.5 KiB) Downloaded 72 times

Should explain what we are trying to accomplish. My max material size is 310 x 310mm.
The ellipses I cut can be a max of 280mm in width to have tabs to hold it in place.
By angling into the corners I can increase the width to 350mm. As you can see things are not
going well with this setup. Compare it to the original file.
Everybody's happy as long as the ellipse is horizontal, parallel to the X axis.
If this is normal, so be it. Microstepping is a method of controlling stepper motors, typically used to achieve higher resolution or smoother motion at low speeds. Should give a better hatch pattern in the text.

[ca.280]

The original that we modified.

[FixitMike]

What I did that seems to work perfectly with no distortion.
Opened the file.
Turned on the 2 levels that had vectors.
Added a new level. Made it active.
Copied the levels with vectors to the new level. Turned off the levels that I copied.
Control A to select all of the vectors.
Use the Rotate tool to rotate vectors 45 degrees
Used Set Size tool to set the width to 280mm with Link XY checked.
Done! No distortion.

Your CNC picture looks like you failed to select the elipse when the vectors were rotated. I don't see any distorted vectors in the file. Or maybe you didn't recalculate and save the toolpath after the rotation.

[ca.280]

Thanks for responding. There is no distortion when set up in Vectric as a .crv file. The tool paths all
show perfect. Sent to "Candle" my go to controller as a Gcode file the display in Candle is perfect.
It's only when it starts to etch that things go belly up. As you can see sometimes it works fine then
just takes off. The enclosed pic is one we just did but parallel to the X axis not angled.
It has a protective cover. Guess I'll just live with it.

[FixitMike]

If it appears good in VCarve and your controller, then the problem is with your machine. Based on other posts on the forum, I would suspect a mechanical problem.. Check that all bolts and screws are tight. The other possibilities may have to do with the electrical connections, grounding, and overheating drivers. Trytng to move too fast or hitting a hard stop can cause lost steps.
I strongly recommend that you determine what the problem is. You don't want this to happen with an expensive piece of material or at the end of a 10 hour 3D carve.

[ca.280]

We did take machine problems into account but as the "Pagani" piece shown above came out
with no problems we are assuming the mechanics and data link (Vectric to steppers) are good.

[kstrauss]

That seems a somewhat questionable conclusion! In my experience when things display correctly in Vectric and work sometimes but fail other times it is almost always a machine -- mechanical, failing connector, electrical interference, etc -- rather than a Vectric problem. Cutting the same gcode twice with different results is a sure sign of a machine/ controller/ workholding issue.

[ca.280]

As stated in my original and subsequent posts, the ONLY time we had etching problems
was when we tried to etch with the pattern at an angle. Just wondered if anyone else had seen the same result.

[adze_cnc]

Consider our dilemma: the only file posted is one that was admitted to work perfectly. FixitMike took it, rotated it and showed that within the software everything seems to be fine.

How about a copy of the file (rotated design) that doesn't work so that we can see if we can find anything wrong with it? Otherwise we can only surmise that the machine and its configuration is the problem.