Thank you so much for this video. I just got a laser engraver fro Christmas and had no idea how to make my rotary work correctly. I used the method of vendor settings and no change. I did your method and presto my engravings on tumblers look correct. Turns out on a 75mm square the y was 55mm calculations show my magic number is 136%. thank you again.
hello I'm from Brazil, I started working with this machine in large size. I watch your videos because in Brazil we do not have facilities to learn anything, my English is very bad but I'm still learning. I wanted to say thank you! Without you it would not have been easy to learn my new job,
I just figured out how to use "enable rotary engrave" option and i thought i would share it here. This is so much better then changing vendor settings for various diameter materials. On the Y axis stepper motor driver you will find information (table) how many steps (pulses) driver is set to to achieve 1 full rotation of stepper ( mine was 5000). So that is one rotation of stepper, but there is reduction gear in rotary (mine was 3:1) So 15000 pulses for me was one full rotation of material. So that is "circle pulse" you have to change. Then everything should work great once you specify diameter of your material also! PS. I got custom rotary that is chuck type not roller, not sure it works same for roller type?
Hi John RDWorks does not really cater for this circumferential drive type of engraver. There is a rotary section in RDWorks but it is designed for the chuck type rotary where everything is predictable. When you are working with circumferences its all linear and depends on the gearing of your rollers and also cannot cope with variations in diameter easily. This was very early on in my learming journey when I was experimenting with finding ways to use the free roller system supplied with the machine.. To be honest it is a very cheap and crappy method of rotary engraving. If yo wish to but something always go for the wheel type as they are much less troublesome and more adjustable. However........you may like to check out these videos from later in the series. ua-cam.com/video/-uafUAX04G4/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html Best wishes Russ
Dam good thanks for the enthusiastic video very descriptive i am rebuilding 5 cnc machines lazer and milling machines and learnt a lot from this video Lyle capetown s africa
I have the 50w chinese engraver also and truly appreciate your videos. I have the identical rotary table you show. Works great for tests as yours did. I am trying to do a wooden rolling pin, everything does as it should except about every 1/4" on the Y-axis, it seems to skip engraving, leaving a thin sliver of material showing through the text, design or whatever. I have tried multiple fonts, speeds, power settings and still get the same skip result. My question for you is have you tried engraving on a wooden dowel and achieved clean, engraved design? Could it be the rotary rollers slip? Or do I require setting the 92.6% y offset more? I can send you a pic of what it is doing. I have to engrave on the small spaced rollers for the rolling pin. Appreciate any advice.
Using the rotary attachment- our image shows it should be circle- when running the "job" it turns into a rectangle squishing the image up and down but not side to side. Another fun part, its mirrored.
Hi Let me try to explain what is happening. Lett me assume that you had a 3" square image you were going to engrave on you table Your Y axis has been tough to know how to convert steps of ther stepper motor into REAL world dimensions The numbers I now use are completely made up and are to illustratye the problem you have. Lets say 3" =3000 motor steps That takes into account the fact that you a certain number of teeth on the stepper pulley and another set that are driving the Y axis belt. So your stepper will recreate a FLAT image perfectly.. To make your rotery work you have unplugged the Y axis drive instructions from the controller and plugged those instructions into a completely different system with totally different pulley sizes . IF you have a roller rotary like in this video or a wheel rotary They both move the CIRCUMFERENCE of your round object. With a little bit of maths we can calculate that a tube/rod that is 0.955" diameter has a circumfrence of 3" Thus IF (and it a biff IF) youir rotatry happened to create one rotation of the rod with 3000 steps them your image will be perfect. However, ff the GEARING on your pulleys means that 3000 steps only rotaes the rod by 108 degrees (half the circumference) then you will c reate a vertcally squashed image. There is complicated way to deal with this problem which I will not describe and a simple way and that is what this video tries to describe. Lets say your original image was 3" tall and when you measure it on your round object it is for example 2.2" tall if you do this simple calculation original dimension/short dimension in this case 3/2.2 = 1,36. Multply that by 100 and you get 135% Ifd you use lightburn or RDWorks ther is a % scaling factor in the top tool bar. Make sure the lock is open and enter the 136% there. All of a sudden you have an overtall image This will now engrave to the rigjht size. Bset wishes and good luck
First off, thank God for your videos! I was about to take a sledgehammer to my laser! (One of the red 60 watt units on eBay) I've been struggling with mine for a month now. Anyway, your videos are a great help, thanks much! My unit has a 4 prong (aviation?) plug for the rotary attachment in the bed area, and I notice there is a spare driver with the end that leads back to the plug just laying about (unconnected). Do you initially attempt to use a similar setup when enabling the roller in the software, or did you start out disabling the y axis from the get go? (I wonder if the toggle in software shunts the y axis commands to a different pin out on the driver board...) hoping really.... I don't have a roller attachment for mine, but I do have the plug ordered and a spare stepper motor laying about. (Plan on diy)
+kilroy07 I'm sure you have already watched part 1 and therefore will have seen that my machine has no special rotary drive controller. I have to unplug the machine Y axis (like yours, the plug is at the back of the bed area but not all machines are there, some you have to go into the control cabinet to make the change) and connect the rotary table into the Y axis control board. This is actually quite a good system as you don't need the Y axis during rotary engraving. Is your spare driver something to do with auto focus (if you have a powered table,some more powerful machines are equipped with this feature) ....a Z axis? Mine has a manual switch controlled powered table but no auto focus. If you need any pictures or info about the roller table just message me and I'll try to help.
kilroy07 i have the same setup as you by the sounds of it and after connecting the wiring all the way through from the rotary, to the bay connector then removing the y axis motor from the controller and plugging in the block from the rotary into the controller i get nothing. It does not rotate at all when i press the up and down arrows on the laser control panel. Its driving me nuts. Have you managed to get yours going yet?
Hi Kev Just a silly question. In the user parameters there is a rotating section. Have you set Enable Rotataing to YES?. If so turn it back to NO. That section is specifically for the chuck type rotary and not the frame type that we have. Russ
Hi Kev In RDWorks top right there is a user tab. That tab gives access to all sorts of thing that you can fiddle with and sometimes need to set but you MUST be connected to your machine first. When you open the tab, make sure the first thing you do is go to the bottom and press the Read button. That will place your current machine settings onto the screen. Scroll down and you will eventually get to a Rotaary section. For your type of unit you will need to ENABLe the rotatry There are a couple of other setting below that you will need to tweak when you get it working and know what you want to engrave n. Make sure you press the WRITE button before exit Good luck Russ
There are two basic types of rotary engravers. As shown in the video the surface of the round object rotates as a function of distance, not rotary angle. This is best set up NOT using the rotary setup in the program. Just calibrate the distance exactly the same as a flat object. On a round object in a chuck, on the other type of rotary adapter, you DO use the rotary setup in the program as diameter then does affect the distance traveled. This adapter is perfect for repeating patterns that wrap completely around an object such as a continuous checkerboard, leaf, wave, etc pattern. The adapter in the video is not great at full cylinder patterns as it is almost impossible to get the ends of the print to align perfectly. However it makes getting proper proportion on text and graphics very simple.
This device was supplied free with the machine but it has some serious failures. Please remember that these are not tutorials but me discovering ways to use the machine almost 3 years ago I don't think I have ever used it in anger. To do engraving on tapered objects you have to block up one end of the frame . The downhill force as the object end stops on the frame naturally causes friction that can result in slippage. The other big issue is the with tapered objects where both large and small end are sitting between the rollers. The small end and big end each want to drive at different speeds. This inevitably results in conflict and random non-uniform rotation. This last issue can be mitigated by putting a rubber band around the big end and allowing the lower friction small end to slip. . There is a much better 1:1 scale non-motorized rotary in ua-cam.com/video/-uafUAX04G4/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html I agree that the chuck rotary system is the only way to do perfect seamless rotary work but with the major drawback that it is only really suited to parallel objects. Thanks for the comment Best wishes Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia I do remember that. I found when using those type drives, a pair of rubber bands work great on some objects with a non perfect surface such as the cardboard tubes.
It's all about stepper pulse settings. Stepper controller on this machine is set to 5000 pulse per revolution. That's if you have 1:1 gear ration on motor to rollers. On this attachment however motor has gear with 20 teeth, and roller has gear with 32 teeth. 32/20=1.6. So you will need 5000*1.6=8000 pulses. Put this setting in User tab (circle pulses) and enable rotary. Additionally put diameter of the rollers (25mm) in there and write settings. This should work in theory, but on my machine I'm still a bit off and I have no idea why. Same thing happens on my Boss Laser which uses same controller (but different pulse settings). Probably has to do with Vendor settings overrides... I'm thinking of applying your ratio idea but not to the Y size but to pulse settings instead. Update: You need to updated Firmware of the controller in order to use User tab rotary functions.
Actually never mind. There's something not right with controller on these machines. It completely ignores settings made in RDWorks user tab. Enabling or disabling rotary, changing pulses, diameter, etc. has no effect. It works on my Boss laser (which has slightly different Ruida controller), but not on this one...
Hi Those User settings are designed for a chuck type rotary engraver which has to divide 360 degrees into step increments. You could go into the Vendor settings and change the step increment for the Y axis to reflect the gearing on your roller system. However, this is a VERY bad idea because A) the ratio will change for every different diameter you use and B) you will curse when you swap back to normal XY use and forget to reset the correct step interval. My method of stretching/compressing your image with a magnification factor is by far the simplest and safest way to operate our peripheral drive rotary. Best wishes Russ
You method absolutely works! However I disagree about Chuck Rotary functionality. It can be set to both Chuck and Roller types of rotary. In case of Chuck, pulse settings doesn't change because chuck usually driven directly by stepper motor. This functionality described in Boss Laser Rotary attach document. I was able to figure out why User rotary settings had no effect in my (and probably yours) machines. Firmware version that was loaded did not support this functionality. After upgrading it to 8.00.53, I'm now able to control rotary parameters from User menu and it works great too! I plan to make a short tutorial video about this.
Thanks for this information. I'm building a DIY rotary device for my "Chinese laser" which is a different model. But wondering... Have you experimented with engravings using this method? I realize the effect might be minimal, (and not sure if visibly apparent or a big deal), but wouldn't the engraving essentially overlap (or if a cut, the equivalent of cutting at a slower speed) Since you are either compressing/bunching or expanding/stretching depending on the scaling required the actual engraving or cut vs the original design?
+Marc G Hi Marc Your question made me think for a few seconds before I convinced myself that the drawing scaling factor deals with ALL issues. When you have the normal XY axes working the machine has already been calibrated at 1:1 ie if you draw a 100mm square you naturally expect the flat cut produced to be 100mm square. If you program the speed at 10mm/sec you would expect it to cut in 40seconds. You now unplug the Y axis and drive your rotary device instead. You do not specify anything in your program that tells the machine you have done this swap and as a consequence the steps per second from the drive board that produce 10mm/sec, remains the same. Don't be confused by different gear ratios, all you need to consider is the ratio by which you must expand or compress the drawing Y axis to achieve the same 100mm square on a circumference. I hope you can see that because the machine knows nothing about your rotary device, you are making just ONE fixed compensation % to your drawing (that applies to any work diameter) to take out all the step and gear ratio differences from the normal Y axis and your circumferential square will still take 40 seconds to cut. Overlap? This is a function of your work circumference. Your compensated drawing cannot exceed the work circumference or you will get overlap Hope this clears some of the fog.
It.s interesting because with my machine things get very squished when I do rotary. Im just now learning it, but I had to compensate by stretching my image by 57.2%. Ive yes to test this same number with different diameters.
Hi Different diameters will not change your calibration factor because this system is rolling on surfaces. and not rotating in angular steps as would happen if you had a chuck type rotary. Your calibration factor is converting step increments through the gear ratio of your belts pulleys and rollers to the correct linear motion. Once done this factor remains constant. Best wishes Russ
Interesting. I did my own little test with this same machine and rollers. But mine comes out compressed instead of stretched. I've only done this with the default square that comes pre programmed into the machine. I looked for slip but did not notice any using both glass and a paper tube. I suppose I could calculate my personal magic ratio and stretch images, but I'd rather not do that since I may just have them on a USB and not be at a computer. I thought that perhaps the compression was due to some slack in the belt tension, but there seems to be too much compression to blame it on that. I looked around the control screen to see if there was an enable roller setting without luck. It just seems that there should be a better way.
+Nathan Clark Hi Nathan I spent ages trying to get this strange device to work and perform predictably. Hence the magic ratio approach. The easy solution you seek with a machine setting is just not there. There IS a 100% fix for your problem and that is to manufacture a whole new set of rollers with a bigger diameter so that the magic ratio becomes 1:1. The alternative is to always save 2 versions of your files to memory stick, one normal and one stretched. Sorry I cannot be more helpful Best regards Russ
@@naRevolution I actually found a set of numbers in the settings where you can adjust and it will give it a perfect fit. I made the changes years ago so I can't tell you where to find them. I think there is a pair of numbers (it's in the software, not the machine). I think I ended up calculating what to change it to and one of the numbers was really high.
Thank you for your videos. I am having a problem with trying to use the rotary attachment on a wine glass. I keep receiving Error Code- Y-Axis Overlap. The glass has a diameter of about 315 mm how to I do about making the page not overlap?
+Ayanna George Hi Ayanna At 315mm diameter that's not a wine glass that's a barrel!! Being serious now, I think a wine glass would be about 100mm diameter with a surface length (circumference) of 315mm. It all depends on the size of your machine as to what the problem may be. The rotary device is controlled by the Y axis driver. If your table Y size is 300mm then it now depends on how your rotary device is geared.The stepper motor will still output 300mm worth of steps. but what does this give as surface movement in the rotary axis? If you put your glass on the rollers and press the UP arrow on your keyboard that would normally send your Y axis backwards. Although the beam cannot move, the RELATIVE motion between beam and glass remains the same and you will find the top surface of the glass is rolling towards you. Keep pressing the UP arrow until movement stops. Put a mark/piece of tape your glass right on the top. Also press the ORIGIN key. Now press the down arrow, until the glass stops. Put a mark on the top and then measure between the two marks. The answer you measure is the largest drawing size you can theoretically fit onto the glass. It may be only 250mm Remember we set the origin right at one end of the rotation? That's important . If you have a picture that needs 250 mm of circumferential movement and your origin id NOT set right at the end of the rotation. The machine will know that the picture will not fit the available 250mm and report an error. Draw a 50mm square and try to run that with the laser beam turned off. If you set the origin at one end of the motion, the program should run and then set it at the other end and it will not run. The machine is complaining that you are tying to do something stupid, but it's too polite to tell you truthfully. I suspect you either have not set the origin or that your drawing exceeds the available rotation. If you are still in trouble after checking these things, please come back to me and we will try thinking of other possibilities. Good luck Best regards Russ
Hi Anna Sadly no, not exactly, because it depends on so many factors. What lens you are using, what type of glass ( the cheaper the glass the better. stay away from lead crystal). the power of your tube and the response time of your HV power supply.. The main mechanism by which you engrave glass is almost like stone chipping on your car windscreen You fire a pulse of energy at the glass and it locally heats up rapidly and because glass is a poor conductor of heat the micro heated area expands rapidly and explodes away from the background glass. This creates a fairly rough engraved texture that is quite sharp to the touch. You may want to dull it off by rubbing a scouring pad over it after engraving. I have heard advice from old hands"saying "hit it hard and fast" By that I would assume something like 400mm/s and 60 to 70% power.. Hmmm.... my experience is much different. I tend to be more delicate with the power. I run at about 200mm/s and usethe minimum power to mark the product. There is a very useful operating zone for your tube called the pre-ionzation zone where the beam properties are great for glass engraving, card cutting and many other delicate operations. If you do not understand about this region then watch this video ua-cam.com/video/nZuatc3eIgU/v-deo.html starting at 24:40 if you don't want to watch it all. You may also be interested in watching ua-cam.com/video/l4XUSt60T68/v-deo.html Best wishes Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia Thank you very much, so far I have seen most of your tutorials, due to mu final degree on Higher Vocational College of mechatronics is connected to this topic. I will check videos you sent me.
Hello, like I do appeal to your experience, I tried last week the rotary system to install on my 50 watt laser chinese, it was not to me. Now I wanted to return to the normal system but do not get it more right, I do not know what is going wrong, I have checked all parameters and are according to me the way it should. If I just put the power to crush the preys arm straight to a randomly to position? the pijltjetoesten ?? if I have the right impression, the arm to the left. I can not cope, so I do appeal to your experience. Thanks for your advice? Ludo vda
Hi Ludo Google translate is very poor at translating technical language so I am finding it difficult to understand your problem. Add your email address to another comment and I will write to you so that we can use pictures and video to examine your problem . I will also delete you comment /email address as soon as possible. Best wishes Russ
This magic ratio only works with 360 degree rotary engraving. If you use a part of your meterial, for example if you draw a 5cmx5cm circle and cut it with this magic ratio you will end up an ellipse shape with a visually thiner y value. It is the true y value but visually it will be an ellipse. If you want to end up with a visually perfect circle you have to measure a direct line between two lines of your end result without curving the ruler, do the math and apply 'that' magic ratio to the drawing.
Your magic ration will almost certainly be different to mine. That ratio only applies to the Y axis (the rotating axis) and works every time for all sizes of object. You must apply the scaling factor to your drawing before programming. Depending on your own personal scaling factor your original drawing will look fat or thin when you program it but will come out perfectly when you laser it. There are things like acceleration factors that can mess with your final engraving because the rollers move so fast that there is loss of motion transmission onto your object. You can put an elastic band around your object to create better friction and /or go into the USER tab and set the idle speed and acceleration to lower values just for rotatory work. Best wishes Russ
Thank you for all the videos, could anyone on here advise me what the maximum diameter of an object is when using the rotary attachment on this machine, i am looking to buy one but just need to check it's suitable Many thanks Jack
Hi Jack My advice is don't buy one of these . This video was done early in my learning journey and the roller rotary was free with the machine. This was my first set of expository tests to find out how it works. Yes you are correct to ask what the limiting diameter is because it all depends on the step dimension that is programmed into your Y axis. This unit plugs into the Y axis and instead of moving the gantry, those step signals drive your rotary stepper motor.. Two initial issues to consider. First, not all Y axes are geared the same. Some will drive directly from the stepper motor shaft but who can say how many teeth there are on that drive pulley. Some will have an intermediate step down gearing pulley system. The number of teeth on all these pulleys will determine the step setting that is pre-set in your machine . The second issue is the gearing ratio on the roller rotary It will be like winning te lottery if the liner distance of a rotary step is the same as a linear Y axis step.. Hence the need to calibrate. You may find that a 100mm wide drawn image finishes up as 80mm wide on a cylinder. Hence the need to stretch the width of your image by 100/80- 1.25 or 125% before you try to engrave it. That magnification ration can be plus or minus depending on the gearing.. Using ths example to try and answer your question. if you have a 500x300mm work area. a 300 drawn image in Y will become 80% of 300=240mm and 240mm is a circumference around a 240/3.142= 76.38mm diameter. So the above paragraph sums up this video and the need to calibrate to overcome whatever gear ratios you will encounter. HOWEVER, there is a major problem with this roller design of rotary. It can work well enough for any object that is cylindrical but try to engrave any non-cylindical object such as a tumbler which is tapered and you immediately encounter a maths/physics problem . Again, lets take a simple exaggerated example of a tumbler which is 100mm diameter at the drinking end and 50mm at the base.. It is obvious that the circumference of the 100mm drinking end is TWICE that of the circumference of the base. therefore any circumferential drive from the rollers faces a conflict. On which diameter does it drive and which to let slip? This will be random and totally unpredictable . So as it stands this system is VERY limited. You may decide to look at the CNC chuck type of rotary. This is totally positive in its control of rotation and even though it will give perfect joining of images that cover 360 degrees, it is again really limited to parallel cylinders but super for engraving drumsticks, pencils or pens which are too small for the cylinder rotary.. The most useful and flexible rotary system is the wheel system. One set of wheels drive and the other set free wheel. You can set the wheels to deal with tapered or parallel objects but as with the roller system you will need to test and produce a calibration factor to apply to your images. www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Rotation-Axis-Rotary-Engraving-Attachment-With_62043360208.html?spm=a2700.details.maylikeexp.1.55867899X2pxbA This wheel system was the best option before I discovered a brilliant idea that someone else had thought of. You might like to watch the second part of design that I created for a motorless rotary system that requires no calibration and you engrave what you draw and it will deal with tapered objects. see ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html Best wishes Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia Hi Russ, thankyou for taking the time to give such in depth feedback, Its really helped me come to a decision on which machine to buy and I will be opting for the DIY rotary system. Many thanks Jack
@@jdev1991 HiJack If you need the dxf file to make the DIY unit then just add your email to another video because I get auto copied with new comments but often my email does not pick up sub comments. Leave your comment live for 10 minutes then remove it. By that time I should have your email address captured and I will send the file to you. Best wishes Russ
Hi Michael Now that you have unplugged your Y axis , when you switch the power back on (or press the rRESET button) the machine is "lost", so it goes through a specific startup routine. If you watch what your X axis does you will see it approach the sensor at a steady speed. The switch detects ON (there will be an LED on the switch which will illuminates)and the motor stops and reverses. It is now looking for the OFF position. It reverses a little and then runs slowly at the switch again until it switches ON. This second time of passing OFF it sets the display to zero. At the same time the Y axis is trying to do the same thing but because you have disconnected the Y motor It cannot automatically do this zeroing routine. To fool the controller you can either push the gantry to the back TWICE or touch the switch TWICE with a screwdriver. Best wishes Russ
+GSCOMPUTERSRGV.COM I'm up for any advice or helpful tips. In session 13 I did experiment with glass engraving on a cheap glass jar. I had previously experimented with a coloured glass beer bottle but I think I used too much power (I could see cracks in several places!!!) As I say in all my videos, I'm trying to find out how to make things work rather than do a professional job at the moment. So, any tips that will enable me to take the next step will be very welcome. Now that I'm starting to tackle longer projects I'm discovering power loss issues with my machine (see sessions 16 and 17) I suspect I shall have difficulties getting any sense from China and may have to resort to Paypal for a resolution.
+SarbarMultimedia Sorry to butt in on this thread but I had up until this comment been looking at buying the same laser from the same seller. It seemed sensible to follow the footsteps of someone who has been there and is doing that; somewhere to learn from. Im dotting about through your videos and have seen the one about the power loss and it likely to be an over driven 40W tube rather than the advertised 50W. I posted the video here to highlight to others - facebook.com/groups/441613082637047 Did you need to go back to paypal for a resolution or did you settle on the fact that it was a bit of a dodgy (pronounced "false") sales pitch?
+Peter Jones Hi Peter Although I bought a 50 watt machine, I have yet to prove it is only operating at 40 watts or thereabouts. I have a power meter on order which will tell me what's actually happening. Up to now its been supposition because of the shape of the power characteristic I have found for my new tube. It also explains the early demise of my original tube because I used it mainly at 85 and 95% Even if it turns out to be only 40 watts I shall actually be happy because it cuts 8mm perspex (albeit very slowly) which is 2mm more than I had anticipated. It's the engineer in me that want's to push the boundaries and find out if it's performing to spec. Several contributors, a lot more knowledgeable than myself, have advised that most (but not all) Chinese machines are over-driven to justify peak wattage claims. Having killed one tube in record time, I made the effort to understand my new tube characteristics and stay within sensible limits to hopefully achieve it's expected 1000 to 2000 hour life. A warning to others to be careful about pushing their machines to the limit will, I'm sure, save many new users the expense of a tube replacement, so thanks for spreading the word The main requirement when buying my machine was not wattage but bed size. It just so happens that the higher the wattage, the longer the tube so the bed size goes up because the frame has to be bigger. For me this is not a production machine , it's just a great way to keep playing with my CAD system and I have enjoyed the element of learning without a manual. Don't let this over-driven issue stop you buying a machine. I have had endless enjoyment from it so far and when I fit an ammeter and do my power meter checks (so that I know I'm running the tube within it's 20mA current spec) I have a few more projects in mind to push my learning further.
Thank you so much for this video. I just got a laser engraver fro Christmas and had no idea how to make my rotary work correctly. I used the method of vendor settings and no change. I did your method and presto my engravings on tumblers look correct. Turns out on a 75mm square the y was 55mm calculations show my magic number is 136%. thank you again.
Thank you so much. Without your indepth video I would have had to purchase another type rotary tool. Your efforts are very much appreciated.
hello I'm from Brazil, I started working with this machine in large size. I watch your videos because in Brazil we do not have facilities to learn anything, my English is very bad but I'm still learning. I wanted to say thank you! Without you it would not have been easy to learn my new job,
I just figured out how to use "enable rotary engrave" option and i thought i would share it here. This is so much better then changing vendor settings for various diameter materials. On the Y axis stepper motor driver you will find information (table) how many steps (pulses) driver is set to to achieve 1 full rotation of stepper ( mine was 5000). So that is one rotation of stepper, but there is reduction gear in rotary (mine was 3:1) So 15000 pulses for me was one full rotation of material. So that is "circle pulse" you have to change. Then everything should work great once you specify diameter of your material also! PS. I got custom rotary that is chuck type not roller, not sure it works same for roller type?
All I can say is Your Pure Genius!! I can't believe RDWorks had such a convoluted way of doing that.
Hi John
RDWorks does not really cater for this circumferential drive type of engraver. There is a rotary section in RDWorks but it is designed for the chuck type rotary where everything is predictable. When you are working with circumferences its all linear and depends on the gearing of your rollers and also cannot cope with variations in diameter easily. This was very early on in my learming journey when I was experimenting with finding ways to use the free roller system supplied with the machine.. To be honest it is a very cheap and crappy method of rotary engraving. If yo wish to but something always go for the wheel type as they are much less troublesome and more adjustable. However........you may like to check out these videos from later in the series.
ua-cam.com/video/-uafUAX04G4/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html
Best wishes
Russ
Dam good thanks for the enthusiastic video very descriptive
i am rebuilding 5 cnc machines lazer and milling machines and learnt a lot from this video
Lyle capetown s africa
Thank you, very good info for those of us that are new to this.
I have the 50w chinese engraver also and truly appreciate your videos. I have the identical rotary table you show. Works great for tests as yours did. I am trying to do a wooden rolling pin, everything does as it should except about every 1/4" on the Y-axis, it seems to skip engraving, leaving a thin sliver of material showing through the text, design or whatever. I have tried multiple fonts, speeds, power settings and still get the same skip result. My question for you is have you tried engraving on a wooden dowel and achieved clean, engraved design? Could it be the rotary rollers slip? Or do I require setting the 92.6% y offset more? I can send you a pic of what it is doing. I have to engrave on the small spaced rollers for the rolling pin. Appreciate any advice.
Really helpful thankyou. Saved me a load os time.
Using the rotary attachment- our image shows it should be circle- when running the "job" it turns into a rectangle squishing the image up and down but not side to side. Another fun part, its mirrored.
Hi
Let me try to explain what is happening.
Lett me assume that you had a 3" square image you were going to engrave on you table Your Y axis has been tough to know how to convert steps of ther stepper motor into REAL world dimensions The numbers I now use are completely made up and are to illustratye the problem you have. Lets say 3" =3000 motor steps That takes into account the fact that you a certain number of teeth on the stepper pulley and another set that are driving the Y axis belt. So your stepper will recreate a FLAT image perfectly..
To make your rotery work you have unplugged the Y axis drive instructions from the controller and plugged those instructions into a completely different system with totally different pulley sizes . IF you have a roller rotary like in this video or a wheel rotary They both move the CIRCUMFERENCE of your round object. With a little bit of maths we can calculate that a tube/rod that is 0.955" diameter has a circumfrence of 3" Thus IF (and it a biff IF) youir rotatry happened to create one rotation of the rod with 3000 steps them your image will be perfect. However, ff the GEARING on your pulleys means that 3000 steps only rotaes the rod by 108 degrees (half the circumference) then you will c reate a vertcally squashed image.
There is complicated way to deal with this problem which I will not describe and a simple way and that is what this video tries to describe.
Lets say your original image was 3" tall and when you measure it on your round object it is for example 2.2" tall if you do this simple calculation
original dimension/short dimension in this case 3/2.2 = 1,36. Multply that by 100 and you get 135% Ifd you use lightburn or RDWorks ther is a % scaling factor in the top tool bar. Make sure the lock is open and enter the 136% there. All of a sudden you have an overtall image This will now engrave to the rigjht size.
Bset wishes and good luck
First off, thank God for your videos! I was about to take a sledgehammer to my laser! (One of the red 60 watt units on eBay) I've been struggling with mine for a month now. Anyway, your videos are a great help, thanks much!
My unit has a 4 prong (aviation?) plug for the rotary attachment in the bed area, and I notice there is a spare driver with the end that leads back to the plug just laying about (unconnected).
Do you initially attempt to use a similar setup when enabling the roller in the software, or did you start out disabling the y axis from the get go? (I wonder if the toggle in software shunts the y axis commands to a different pin out on the driver board...) hoping really....
I don't have a roller attachment for mine, but I do have the plug ordered and a spare stepper motor laying about. (Plan on diy)
+kilroy07
I'm sure you have already watched part 1 and therefore will have seen that my machine has no special rotary drive controller. I have to unplug the machine Y axis (like yours, the plug is at the back of the bed area but not all machines are there, some you have to go into the control cabinet to make the change) and connect the rotary table into the Y axis control board. This is actually quite a good system as you don't need the Y axis during rotary engraving.
Is your spare driver something to do with auto focus (if you have a powered table,some more powerful machines are equipped with this feature) ....a Z axis? Mine has a manual switch controlled powered table but no auto focus.
If you need any pictures or info about the roller table just message me and I'll try to help.
kilroy07 i have the same setup as you by the sounds of it and after connecting the wiring all the way through from the rotary, to the bay connector then removing the y axis motor from the controller and plugging in the block from the rotary into the controller i get nothing. It does not rotate at all when i press the up and down arrows on the laser control panel. Its driving me nuts. Have you managed to get yours going yet?
Hi Kev
Just a silly question. In the user parameters there is a rotating section. Have you set Enable Rotataing to YES?. If so turn it back to NO. That section is specifically for the chuck type rotary and not the frame type that we have.
Russ
Hi Russ, Its a chuck style one I have, do you mean user parameters in RD works or on the laser itself? Many Thanks.
Hi Kev
In RDWorks top right there is a user tab. That tab gives access to all sorts of thing that you can fiddle with and sometimes need to set but you MUST be connected to your machine first. When you open the tab, make sure the first thing you do is go to the bottom and press the Read button. That will place your current machine settings onto the screen. Scroll down and you will eventually get to a Rotaary section. For your type of unit you will need to ENABLe the rotatry There are a couple of other setting below that you will need to tweak when you get it working and know what you want to engrave n. Make sure you press the WRITE button before exit
Good luck
Russ
There are two basic types of rotary engravers. As shown in the video the surface of the round object rotates as a function of distance, not rotary angle. This is best set up NOT using the rotary setup in the program. Just calibrate the distance exactly the same as a flat object. On a round object in a chuck, on the other type of rotary adapter, you DO use the rotary setup in the program as diameter then does affect the distance traveled. This adapter is perfect for repeating patterns that wrap completely around an object such as a continuous checkerboard, leaf, wave, etc pattern. The adapter in the video is not great at full cylinder patterns as it is almost impossible to get the ends of the print to align perfectly. However it makes getting proper proportion on text and graphics very simple.
This device was supplied free with the machine but it has some serious failures. Please remember that these are not tutorials but me discovering ways to use the machine almost 3 years ago I don't think I have ever used it in anger. To do engraving on tapered objects you have to block up one end of the frame . The downhill force as the object end stops on the frame naturally causes friction that can result in slippage. The other big issue is the with tapered objects where both large and small end are sitting between the rollers. The small end and big end each want to drive at different speeds. This inevitably results in conflict and random non-uniform rotation. This last issue can be mitigated by putting a rubber band around the big end and allowing the lower friction small end to slip. . There is a much better 1:1 scale non-motorized rotary in
ua-cam.com/video/-uafUAX04G4/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html
I agree that the chuck rotary system is the only way to do perfect seamless rotary work but with the major drawback that it is only really suited to parallel objects.
Thanks for the comment
Best wishes
Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia I do remember that. I found when using those type drives, a pair of rubber bands work great on some objects with a non perfect surface such as the cardboard tubes.
It's all about stepper pulse settings. Stepper controller on this machine is set to 5000 pulse per revolution. That's if you have 1:1 gear ration on motor to rollers. On this attachment however motor has gear with 20 teeth, and roller has gear with 32 teeth. 32/20=1.6. So you will need 5000*1.6=8000 pulses. Put this setting in User tab (circle pulses) and enable rotary. Additionally put diameter of the rollers (25mm) in there and write settings. This should work in theory, but on my machine I'm still a bit off and I have no idea why. Same thing happens on my Boss Laser which uses same controller (but different pulse settings). Probably has to do with Vendor settings overrides... I'm thinking of applying your ratio idea but not to the Y size but to pulse settings instead.
Update: You need to updated Firmware of the controller in order to use User tab rotary functions.
Actually never mind. There's something not right with controller on these machines. It completely ignores settings made in RDWorks user tab. Enabling or disabling rotary, changing pulses, diameter, etc. has no effect. It works on my Boss laser (which has slightly different Ruida controller), but not on this one...
Hi
Those User settings are designed for a chuck type rotary engraver which has to divide 360 degrees into step increments. You could go into the Vendor settings and change the step increment for the Y axis to reflect the gearing on your roller system. However, this is a VERY bad idea because A) the ratio will change for every different diameter you use and B) you will curse when you swap back to normal XY use and forget to reset the correct step interval. My method of stretching/compressing your image with a magnification factor is by far the simplest and safest way to operate our peripheral drive rotary.
Best wishes
Russ
You method absolutely works! However I disagree about Chuck Rotary functionality. It can be set to both Chuck and Roller types of rotary. In case of Chuck, pulse settings doesn't change because chuck usually driven directly by stepper motor. This functionality described in Boss Laser Rotary attach document.
I was able to figure out why User rotary settings had no effect in my (and probably yours) machines. Firmware version that was loaded did not support this functionality. After upgrading it to 8.00.53, I'm now able to control rotary parameters from User menu and it works great too! I plan to make a short tutorial video about this.
92.6, Brilliant!
Thanks for this information. I'm building a DIY rotary device for my "Chinese laser" which is a different model. But wondering...
Have you experimented with engravings using this method? I realize the effect might be minimal, (and not sure if visibly apparent or a big deal), but wouldn't the engraving essentially overlap (or if a cut, the equivalent of cutting at a slower speed) Since you are either compressing/bunching or expanding/stretching depending on the scaling required the actual engraving or cut vs the original design?
+Marc G
Hi Marc
Your question made me think for a few seconds before I convinced myself that the drawing scaling factor deals with ALL issues.
When you have the normal XY axes working the machine has already been calibrated at 1:1 ie if you draw a 100mm square you naturally expect the flat cut produced to be 100mm square. If you program the speed at 10mm/sec you would expect it to cut in 40seconds. You now unplug the Y axis and drive your rotary device instead. You do not specify anything in your program that tells the machine you have done this swap and as a consequence the steps per second from the drive board that produce 10mm/sec, remains the same. Don't be confused by different gear ratios, all you need to consider is the ratio by which you must expand or compress the drawing Y axis to achieve the same 100mm square on a circumference. I hope you can see that because the machine knows nothing about your rotary device, you are making just ONE fixed compensation % to your drawing (that applies to any work diameter) to take out all the step and gear ratio differences from the normal Y axis and your circumferential square will still take 40 seconds to cut.
Overlap? This is a function of your work circumference. Your compensated drawing cannot exceed the work circumference or you will get overlap
Hope this clears some of the fog.
It.s interesting because with my machine things get very squished when I do rotary. Im just now learning it, but I had to compensate by stretching my image by 57.2%. Ive yes to test this same number with different diameters.
Hi Different diameters will not change your calibration factor because this system is rolling on surfaces. and not rotating in angular steps as would happen if you had a chuck type rotary. Your calibration factor is converting step increments through the gear ratio of your belts pulleys and rollers to the correct linear motion. Once done this factor remains constant.
Best wishes
Russ
THANK YOU SOOOOOOOO MUCH!
Interesting. I did my own little test with this same machine and rollers. But mine comes out compressed instead of stretched. I've only done this with the default square that comes pre programmed into the machine. I looked for slip but did not notice any using both glass and a paper tube. I suppose I could calculate my personal magic ratio and stretch images, but I'd rather not do that since I may just have them on a USB and not be at a computer. I thought that perhaps the compression was due to some slack in the belt tension, but there seems to be too much compression to blame it on that. I looked around the control screen to see if there was an enable roller setting without luck. It just seems that there should be a better way.
+Nathan Clark
Hi Nathan
I spent ages trying to get this strange device to work and perform predictably. Hence the magic ratio approach. The easy solution you seek with a machine setting is just not there. There IS a 100% fix for your problem and that is to manufacture a whole new set of rollers with a bigger diameter so that the magic ratio becomes 1:1. The alternative is to always save 2 versions of your files to memory stick, one normal and one stretched.
Sorry I cannot be more helpful
Best regards
Russ
+SarbarMultimedia I may take a crack at building up the rollers with bicycle tubing after more testing. It should provide some nice grip.
Mine gets squished as well, my magic number is to stretch by 57.2%
@@naRevolution I actually found a set of numbers in the settings where you can adjust and it will give it a perfect fit. I made the changes years ago so I can't tell you where to find them. I think there is a pair of numbers (it's in the software, not the machine). I think I ended up calculating what to change it to and one of the numbers was really high.
Thank you for your videos. I am having a problem with trying to use the rotary attachment on a wine glass. I keep receiving Error Code- Y-Axis Overlap. The glass has a diameter of about 315 mm how to I do about making the page not overlap?
+Ayanna George
Hi Ayanna
At 315mm diameter that's not a wine glass that's a barrel!!
Being serious now, I think a wine glass would be about 100mm diameter with a surface length (circumference) of 315mm.
It all depends on the size of your machine as to what the problem may be. The rotary device is controlled by the Y axis driver. If your table Y size is 300mm then it now depends on how your rotary device is geared.The stepper motor will still output 300mm worth of steps. but what does this give as surface movement in the rotary axis?
If you put your glass on the rollers and press the UP arrow on your keyboard that would normally send your Y axis backwards. Although the beam cannot move, the RELATIVE motion between beam and glass remains the same and you will find the top surface of the glass is rolling towards you. Keep pressing the UP arrow until movement stops. Put a mark/piece of tape your glass right on the top. Also press the ORIGIN key. Now press the down arrow, until the glass stops. Put a mark on the top and then measure between the two marks. The answer you measure is the largest drawing size you can theoretically fit onto the glass. It may be only 250mm
Remember we set the origin right at one end of the rotation? That's important . If you have a picture that needs 250 mm of circumferential movement and your origin id NOT set right at the end of the rotation. The machine will know that the picture will not fit the available 250mm and report an error.
Draw a 50mm square and try to run that with the laser beam turned off. If you set the origin at one end of the motion, the program should run and then set it at the other end and it will not run.
The machine is complaining that you are tying to do something stupid, but it's too polite to tell you truthfully. I suspect you either have not set the origin or that your drawing exceeds the available rotation.
If you are still in trouble after checking these things, please come back to me and we will try thinking of other possibilities.
Good luck
Best regards
Russ
you are brilliant!
Hi, I have one question regarding to engraving glass. Could you tell me what parameters did you use for cutting speed and power?
Hi Anna
Sadly no, not exactly, because it depends on so many factors. What lens you are using, what type of glass ( the cheaper the glass the better. stay away from lead crystal). the power of your tube and the response time of your HV power supply.. The main mechanism by which you engrave glass is almost like stone chipping on your car windscreen You fire a pulse of energy at the glass and it locally heats up rapidly and because glass is a poor conductor of heat the micro heated area expands rapidly and explodes away from the background glass. This creates a fairly rough engraved texture that is quite sharp to the touch. You may want to dull it off by rubbing a scouring pad over it after engraving. I have heard advice from old hands"saying "hit it hard and fast" By that I would assume something like 400mm/s and 60 to 70% power.. Hmmm.... my experience is much different. I tend to be more delicate with the power. I run at about 200mm/s and usethe minimum power to mark the product. There is a very useful operating zone for your tube called the pre-ionzation zone where the beam properties are great for glass engraving, card cutting and many other delicate operations. If you do not understand about this region then watch this video
ua-cam.com/video/nZuatc3eIgU/v-deo.html starting at 24:40 if you don't want to watch it all.
You may also be interested in watching
ua-cam.com/video/l4XUSt60T68/v-deo.html
Best wishes
Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia Thank you very much, so far I have seen most of your tutorials, due to mu final degree on Higher Vocational College of mechatronics is connected to this topic. I will check videos you sent me.
serdecznie dziekuje
wery good thank you
Hello, like I do appeal to your experience, I tried last week the rotary system to install on my 50 watt laser chinese, it was not to me. Now I wanted to return to the normal system but do not get it more right, I do not know what is going wrong, I have checked all parameters and are according to me the way it should. If I just put the power to crush the preys arm straight to a randomly to position? the pijltjetoesten ?? if I have the right impression, the arm to the left. I can not cope, so I do appeal to your experience. Thanks for your advice? Ludo vda
Hi Ludo
Google translate is very poor at translating technical language so I am finding it difficult to understand your problem. Add your email address to another comment and I will write to you so that we can use pictures and video to examine your problem . I will also delete you comment /email address as soon as possible.
Best wishes
Russ
This magic ratio only works with 360 degree rotary engraving. If you use a part of your meterial, for example if you draw a 5cmx5cm circle and cut it with this magic ratio you will end up an ellipse shape with a visually thiner y value. It is the true y value but visually it will be an ellipse. If you want to end up with a visually perfect circle you have to measure a direct line between two lines of your end result without curving the ruler, do the math and apply 'that' magic ratio to the drawing.
Your magic ration will almost certainly be different to mine. That ratio only applies to the Y axis (the rotating axis) and works every time for all sizes of object. You must apply the scaling factor to your drawing before programming. Depending on your own personal scaling factor your original drawing will look fat or thin when you program it but will come out perfectly when you laser it. There are things like acceleration factors that can mess with your final engraving because the rollers move so fast that there is loss of motion transmission onto your object. You can put an elastic band around your object to create better friction and /or go into the USER tab and set the idle speed and acceleration to lower values just for rotatory work.
Best wishes
Russ
Thank you for all the videos, could anyone on here advise me what the maximum diameter of an object is when using the rotary attachment on this machine, i am looking to buy one but just need to check it's suitable
Many thanks
Jack
Hi Jack
My advice is don't buy one of these . This video was done early in my learning journey and the roller rotary was free with the machine. This was my first set of expository tests to find out how it works. Yes you are correct to ask what the limiting diameter is because it all depends on the step dimension that is programmed into your Y axis. This unit plugs into the Y axis and instead of moving the gantry, those step signals drive your rotary stepper motor.. Two initial issues to consider. First, not all Y axes are geared the same. Some will drive directly from the stepper motor shaft but who can say how many teeth there are on that drive pulley. Some will have an intermediate step down gearing pulley system. The number of teeth on all these pulleys will determine the step setting that is pre-set in your machine . The second issue is the gearing ratio on the roller rotary It will be like winning te lottery if the liner distance of a rotary step is the same as a linear Y axis step.. Hence the need to calibrate. You may find that a 100mm wide drawn image finishes up as 80mm wide on a cylinder. Hence the need to stretch the width of your image by 100/80- 1.25 or 125% before you try to engrave it. That magnification ration can be plus or minus depending on the gearing.. Using ths example to try and answer your question. if you have a 500x300mm work area. a 300 drawn image in Y will become 80% of 300=240mm and 240mm is a circumference around a
240/3.142= 76.38mm diameter.
So the above paragraph sums up this video and the need to calibrate to overcome whatever gear ratios you will encounter. HOWEVER, there is a major problem with this roller design of rotary. It can work well enough for any object that is cylindrical but try to engrave any non-cylindical object such as a tumbler which is tapered and you immediately encounter a maths/physics problem . Again, lets take a simple exaggerated example of a tumbler which is 100mm diameter at the drinking end and 50mm at the base.. It is obvious that the circumference of the 100mm drinking end is TWICE that of the circumference of the base. therefore any circumferential drive from the rollers faces a conflict. On which diameter does it drive and which to let slip? This will be random and totally unpredictable . So as it stands this system is VERY limited.
You may decide to look at the CNC chuck type of rotary. This is totally positive in its control of rotation and even though it will give perfect joining of images that cover 360 degrees, it is again really limited to parallel cylinders but super for engraving drumsticks, pencils or pens which are too small for the cylinder rotary..
The most useful and flexible rotary system is the wheel system. One set of wheels drive and the other set free wheel. You can set the wheels to deal with tapered or parallel objects but as with the roller system you will need to test and produce a calibration factor to apply to your images.
www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Rotation-Axis-Rotary-Engraving-Attachment-With_62043360208.html?spm=a2700.details.maylikeexp.1.55867899X2pxbA
This wheel system was the best option before I discovered a brilliant idea that someone else had thought of. You might like to watch the second part of design that I created for a motorless rotary system that requires no calibration and you engrave what you draw and it will deal with tapered objects.
see ua-cam.com/video/mCQqn0kfvCo/v-deo.html
Best wishes
Russ
@@SarbarMultimedia Hi Russ, thankyou for taking the time to give such in depth feedback, Its really helped me come to a decision on which machine to buy and I will be opting for the DIY rotary system.
Many thanks
Jack
@@jdev1991
HiJack
If you need the dxf file to make the DIY unit then just add your email to another video because I get auto copied with new comments but often my email does not pick up sub comments. Leave your comment live for 10 minutes then remove it. By that time I should have your email address captured and I will send the file to you.
Best wishes
Russ
Hi, My K$) laser won't Stop at home position. Belt keeps running. Could you please help. I really like your videos.
Hi Michael
Now that you have unplugged your Y axis , when you switch the power back on (or press the rRESET button) the machine is "lost", so it goes through a specific startup routine. If you watch what your X axis does you will see it approach the sensor at a steady speed. The switch detects ON (there will be an LED on the switch which will illuminates)and the motor stops and reverses. It is now looking for the OFF position. It reverses a little and then runs slowly at the switch again until it switches ON. This second time of passing OFF it sets the display to zero.
At the same time the Y axis is trying to do the same thing but because you have disconnected the Y motor It cannot automatically do this zeroing routine. To fool the controller you can either push the gantry to the back TWICE or touch the switch TWICE with a screwdriver.
Best wishes
Russ
I don't know if you've figured out how to engrave a glass yet but if not I can help you out. It's fairly simple.
+GSCOMPUTERSRGV.COM I'm up for any advice or helpful tips. In session 13 I did experiment with glass engraving on a cheap glass jar. I had previously experimented with a coloured glass beer bottle but I think I used too much power (I could see cracks in several places!!!) As I say in all my videos, I'm trying to find out how to make things work rather than do a professional job at the moment. So, any tips that will enable me to take the next step will be very welcome. Now that I'm starting to tackle longer projects I'm discovering power loss issues with my machine (see sessions 16 and 17) I suspect I shall have difficulties getting any sense from China and may have to resort to Paypal for a resolution.
Give me a call sometime. Maybe we can exchange tips. Contact info is on my website.
I tried replying to your email but it kept getting bounced back. I have added you on skype.
+SarbarMultimedia Sorry to butt in on this thread but I had up until this comment been looking at buying the same laser from the same seller. It seemed sensible to follow the footsteps of someone who has been there and is doing that; somewhere to learn from.
Im dotting about through your videos and have seen the one about the power loss and it likely to be an over driven 40W tube rather than the advertised 50W. I posted the video here to highlight to others - facebook.com/groups/441613082637047
Did you need to go back to paypal for a resolution or did you settle on the fact that it was a bit of a dodgy (pronounced "false") sales pitch?
+Peter Jones
Hi Peter
Although I bought a 50 watt machine, I have yet to prove it is only operating at 40 watts or thereabouts. I have a power meter on order which will tell me what's actually happening. Up to now its been supposition because of the shape of the power characteristic I have found for my new tube. It also explains the early demise of my original tube because I used it mainly at 85 and 95% Even if it turns out to be only 40 watts I shall actually be happy because it cuts 8mm perspex (albeit very slowly) which is 2mm more than I had anticipated. It's the engineer in me that want's to push the boundaries and find out if it's performing to spec. Several contributors, a lot more knowledgeable than myself, have advised that most (but not all) Chinese machines are over-driven to justify peak wattage claims. Having killed one tube in record time, I made the effort to understand my new tube characteristics and stay within sensible limits to hopefully achieve it's expected 1000 to 2000 hour life. A warning to others to be careful about pushing their machines to the limit will, I'm sure, save many new users the expense of a tube replacement, so thanks for spreading the word The main requirement when buying my machine was not wattage but bed size. It just so happens that the higher the wattage, the longer the tube so the bed size goes up because the frame has to be bigger. For me this is not a production machine , it's just a great way to keep playing with my CAD system and I have enjoyed the element of learning without a manual. Don't let this over-driven issue stop you buying a machine. I have had endless enjoyment from it so far and when I fit an ammeter and do my power meter checks (so that I know I'm running the tube within it's 20mA current spec) I have a few more projects in mind to push my learning further.