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Calibrating the RD Works controlled Chinese Laser

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 9:26 pm
by parkview
Over time the X/Y drive belts will stretch, so the X/Y will go out of calibration. this means in my case, that I went to cut something that had to precisely match something else. I found the X axis was 1.3% out.

This is kind of easily fixed by cutting or marking out a fixed pattern, measuring it and entering the changes into the Vendor section of RDWorks software. It will then upload the changes to the laser cutter.

1) Either use my attached LightBurn file or make your own. Unfortunately the current version of LightBurn doesn't display the precise mouse cursor location, so the grid is set to 0.1mm and you have to count tenths of a mm. I have marked in the needed line measurements and the X/Y distances. Cut out the line markings pattern and measure the distances between the X and Y lines. I took a smartphone photo with a ruler that had 0.5mm markings and then expanded the photo to see and count the distances more accurately:
161.2mm.jpg
161.2mm.jpg (15.39 KiB) Viewed 9415 times


2) Open RDWorks and turn on the laser cutter.

3) open the adjustment dialogue screen: File | Vendor Settings | Password: RD8888 | click on Read button - you have to do this to enable the Write button.

4) click on ... button next to the the Step Length(um) entry.
RDWorks laser Calibration.jpg
RDWorks laser Calibration.jpg (28.08 KiB) Viewed 9415 times


5) enter in the screen/design measurements in the red box and the laser cut measurements in the green box. Click OK, and the software will work out the new stepping value to use.

6) do the same for the Y values on the next TAB over.

7) click on the Write button to save the changes to the laser cutter. You can also click Save button to save them to a local file on your RDWorks PC.

(calibration template coming soon)

Re: Calibrating the RD Works controlled Chinese Laser

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 10:05 am
by seaton
Thanks Paul,

I should do this for mine, I do it for my 3D printers but haven't for the laser cutter