origin: center for both engraving and cutting

[ztones]

I am using Signlab 5.12. I have a vytek plotter driver installed which works with my vytek laser engraver / cutter. I have been engraving and cutting in the same file succesfully for a long time. I cannot seem to accomplish a very simple engrave and cut from ORIGIN being CENTER instead of lower left corner. In the plotter setup, I set the ORIGIN to be CENTER. From the PLOT menu (which I believe is also called 'machine' or 'cut' menu in some cases) I had tried all avaiable CUT settings: PAGE, WINDOW, SIGN BLANK (or material). Nothing works. I set the ORIGIN (home position) on the laser and it goes to engrave and cut as if if the ORIGIN was the lower left corner.

THis seems to be a problem on combo raster engraving and cutting. I believe when I was cutting only, this option works and I can set the ORIGIN to be center and it will cut from origin being in the center. What am I doing wrong or missing? How can I set the origin / home position / registration to be CENTER so it would cut and engrave from that center position?

[rayw]

To make the engrave cut in the middle, set the Cut Area to Signblank, set the Signblank to the size of the engraver plate and position the objects in the centre of the plate. Frank might be the better guy to answer your query in more detail, so I will ask him to take a look also.

[frankd]

The machine is a lower left origin.
Why do you want a center origin?

Do you have something repetitve you are trying to do.
Say engrave 200 identical plates.

You could try this.
Say you table is 20 inch tall by 20 inch wide.
Say you plate is 2 inch tall by 4 inch wide.
Change the Origin in you driver to Center.
Change you Signblank size to 2 inch tall by 4 inch wide
In Cut/Plotting defaults. change the XMove from 0 to 8
Change you YMove from 0 to 9
Then cut Signblank.

Signlab will find the center of the plate whci will be at x=2,y=1
Signlab will move all the cut data in X by 8 inches and Y by 9 inches.
In short, the middle of the plate will be moves to the middle of the table.

You need to change your X and YMove based on the size of the plate and the size of the table.

[ztones]

Thanks for your reply. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I wasn't talking about running the job from the center of machine. I want to start the job from the center of the BLANK. I can get this to work for a cut only job, but not for a combo cut and engrave job.

The need for this is based on the fact that for this particular job (and often other jobs) the center point can be easily located or is already marked, but due to its irregular size, finding the corner is more difficult. So, I'd like to use the center mark as my reference point and run the job from there. Is this possible? Thanks!

[ztones]

Wow, this is taking forver.......