Help Wanted - Artisan Rotary Laser Dwell Time

Hello Snapmakers!

I have been getting my Artisan up and going, and I am running into some trouble with the 10W laser when used in conjunction with the rotary module. I am attempting to engrave powder coated stainless water bottles like I have done with my A350T, but I ran into a couple snags. Initially, the laser would drift to the right as it was engraving. It also dwelled at the start and stop of each new line when using line filled engraving (with the imported image as a vector or black and white).

With the help of Snapmaker support, I was able to get firmware version 2.4.25 which mitigates the drift. However, the new firmware does not stop the dwell time at the beginning and end of each line. When engraving 2 identical pieces on the 2.0 and the Artisan, the Artisan takes 10-25% longer, which definitely confirms that itā€™s stopping often. The thing that I find to be weird is the time difference is also reflected in the estimate in Luban. I am wondering if the G-code being generated has the dwell in it, and if so, how do I disable that in Luban?

Below are some photos for reference.



Please let me know if you have run into this, and if you have found a solution!

~mech

1 Like

That is strange, other then that they look good donā€™t mind me asking what is all the settings you use I been trying to do the same thing on my artisan as well

1 Like

My settings on rotary are 0.08mm line spacing, 1750mm/min travel and work speed, and 30-60% power based on the powder coat color and thickness. If you go higher power, youā€™ll just have more soot to clean up. If you go too low on power, the powder coat will still have some remaining on the bottle.

1 Like

When you set the work origin how high do you have it from tumbler, whatever height I set the Z at thatā€™s where it runs the laser on tumbler or anything else I run on the rotary tool. I did the calibration
Thanks again

The method I use to set the Z height is the standard one recommended by Snapmaker. I place the calibration card on the piece and let the laser come down to touch it. After that, it raises up a specified amount, and it appears to have the best offset.

If only snapmaker released the g-code reference for artisan =)
Did you search for dwell G4 in the file from artisan?

1 Like

I did calibrate the laser but wherever I start the the job the z starts to engrave wherever itā€™s at it never moves up our down

I did search the G-code just now, and there isnā€™t a ā€œG4ā€ specifying dwell time in the file. Maybe itā€™s still a firmware problem?

Are you using the 10W or the 1.6W laser?

10w I calibrated it do you calibrate it right before u run the part everytime?

Here is a video of the machine moving to the correct height after I ran it down to the point where it was touching the bottle. It prompts me to do this every time I start a rotary laser project.

Thanks seem to do the trick now trying to dial in settings

1 Like

What are the setting for powder coated tumblers? (Yeti, Stanley, etc)

1750mm/min at 40% power on the 10W laser. I have to go up to 60% on certain brands of bottles.

Im having the same problem, has anyone figured out a solution?

The drifting problem has stopped after I updated to a beta firmware months ago. Testing the issue with dwell is something Iā€™ve not wanted to attempt, but supposedly the last stable firmware release has some improvements there. I recommend updating your firmware and giving it another go. I have some test bottles Iā€™ll try at some point, but not soon.

SO yes the first problem with the right hand drift is solved however the dwell time problem and the rotary speed when doing vector line fill has not. ive been working with support for over a month now and no results. has anyone figured out how to fix it?
i just ran a test with two tool paths on the exact same image. first the vector on path setting works perfectly. it runs at the correct rotational speeds. but as soon as it switches to vector fill it drops rotational speed down to what looks like 1000mm/m. nothing i do changes the speed, not the adjustments on the control unit not anything i do in the initial Gcode. nothing

SO yes the first problem with the right hand drift is solved however the dwell time problem and the rotary speed when doing vector line fill has not. ive been working with support for over a month now and no results. has anyone figured out how to fix it?
i just ran a test with two tool paths on the exact same image. first the vector on path setting works perfectly. it runs at the correct rotational speeds. but as soon as it switches to vector fill it drops rotational speed down to what looks like 1000mm/m. nothing i do changes the speed, not the adjustments on the control unit not anything i do in the initial Gcode. nothing

I was able to figure out a couple things and have got my Artisan working for rotational parts. For your issue, I think you may have run into the rotational max speed for the rotary module which is 45 degrees per second. That will change the max linear speed based on the size of the object rotating, and in my case (tumblers) that is about 1750mm/min. My wife does a lot of vanilla extract bottles that are small and her max speed is 1350mm/min. The software limits the speed on ā€œline filledā€ to itā€™s max rotational speed or so Iā€™ve noticed. The dwell setting was fixed for me by adjusting the ā€œConstant Power Modeā€ to on, and adjusting the ā€œOver Scanningā€ to 20 percent. I havenā€™t had to mess with the ā€œScan Offsetā€ because the rotary module doesnā€™t seem to have much backlash.

So essentially the artisan has a rotational speed limit but the at350 doesnā€™t? But only on line filled engraving it seems. Like i said, on path vector it moves at 3000mm/m it looks like.