2D Design V2 and Mercury III Laser Cutter

[Boredguy]

Anyone else out there with 2D Design and a Mercury III laser cutter who can confirm an issue we appear to be having before I call the cutter suppliers again?

 

We've noticed that unless you either draw a circle, or draw each line separately, the laser wants to try and engrave the image instead of cutting it.

 

I'm sure it's a setting in the printer config, but as I'm still battling with the blasted laptop to actually send the 2D Design document to the Laser Cutter without it crashing I've not had much time to look at the engraving issue.

[GeekyPete]

Hi, We have a different set up here, 2D design with a veralaser cutter.

 

When you print/send a drawing to the cutter it drops into a "driver" which has a whole GUI of it's own and you can set quite a few settings in there.

 

It's in the driver you define if the cutter cuts or engraves. You tell it how fast the laser travels and at what speed according to the colour of the line in the drawing. So you might set it that Red moves slowly at full power and that gives a cut. Blue moves faster at 60% engraves, Black moves Fast at 25% power etches. You get the idea. It also has a library of materials. with predefined settings to take the trial and error out of it.

 

I don't know your laser cutter but the settings you are looking for are definitely in the driver and not in 2D Design.

[Boredguy]

I know it's in the driver, but it just seems strange that circles sent from 2D "cut" happily with red at the specified settings, but a rectangle with identical settings tries to engrave =/

[plexer]

Are the line thicknesses the same?

 

Ben

[Boredguy]

Absolutely identical.

 

In 2D design, I can draw a circle, and it cuts. if I then select the same circle but move the bottom middle point upwards to turn it into an ellipse, it engraves... very strange.

[patmorrow]

This is a relatively easy one to fix but it has to be done every time you open 2D Design.

 

Set up --> Customise--> operation.

This opens a window. In the top right hand corner is a drop down in the Windows Printer Driver section called VECTOR. Change this from MODE 2 (default) to MODE 1

 

Exit all this and your laser will cut.

[geohanson]

This is a relatively easy one to fix but it has to be done every time you open 2D Design.

 

Set up --> Customise--> operation.

This opens a window. In the top right hand corner is a drop down in the Windows Printer Driver section called VECTOR. Change this from MODE 2 (default) to MODE 1

 

Exit all this and your laser will cut.

 

You can expand on this if you want to apply it to all users of the PC, without having to change the setting each time.

Once you've changed the above setting (our manual also recommends changing BITMAP to MODE 1) then in 2D Design do "Setup" > "Set As Default" > "OK"

This will create a "Default.cfg" file in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Techsoft Design Tools\2D Design V2\Setups\Default.cfg

This may be different if AppData is redirected.

 

Once you have this Defaults.cfg file, you can use a GPO (Users > Preferences > Windows Settings > Files) to create a file copy job to copy the Defaults.cfg file from a network location to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Techsoft Design Tools\2D Design V2\Setups\Default.cfg

The %Username% variable should add the file to the appdata folder of the current user.

 

I have used Item Level Targetting to only target the policy to our two Laser Cutter PCs.

 

Seems to work fine for us

[Aprice]

This is a relatively easy one to fix but it has to be done every time you open 2D Design.

 

Set up --> Customise--> operation.

This opens a window. In the top right hand corner is a drop down in the Windows Printer Driver section called VECTOR. Change this from MODE 2 (default) to MODE 1

 

Exit all this and your laser will cut.

I believe you can save it, it's under one of the tabs something like save setup as default.