Rotary Roller Particulars

Considerable effort was required to align the Roller's straight bar with the bed, as it was to get the motorized and free spinning wheels to be in the same horizontal plane. i/e. changing their Z axis position relative to the laser chamber bed (the Roller apparatus has spin knobs to do this).  Careful work is also required to get the center of the cylindrical drinking vessel aligned and centered on the laser head position; this is best done while standing at the side of the laser and looking in the Y direction (the same direction as the gantry).

Depending on the rim and base shapes of your drinking vessel, you also want to remember to give clearance between the rim and/or base of the vessel to avoid touching against the wheel base on the other side so they don't scrape the wheels of the vessel while it is turning.

Be aware that there is a rotational equivalent to hitting the Y stop limits within your chamber bed; you can only do so many rotations in either the clockwise are counterclockwise direction before the roller becomes unresponsive and its position does not change. This will also result in tests activated by the software that do not rotate the wheels.  You'll get some clues that you are at your limit point if you see an error message on the view port for the on-board laser control panel that you have "Y slop over" error:

Also see this link for more details on error messages on the Boss Laser's LCD panel related to using the Rotary Roller


When everything is working well, here is an example of the intricate artwork you can engrave into a tall drinking glass (the bird is 5 inches tall):

When you try to frame your design and you'll also see that it is unrealistically narrow in the one direction.  If you find yourself near such a limit, just manually move away (either within software or using the on-board arrow keys) a number of steps to clear open Y space so you can properly frame your design.

While working in rotation mode you will likely need to drop your scan gap interval by a factor of three to eight lower than working on flat materials. For example whereas a scan gap of 0.067 mm is good for flat materials, your likely should set a scan gap closer to 0.015 mm while in rotation mode.

Click here to see more photos and videos of the Rotary roller apparatus in action