Not lining up! Still :(

Beyond the Manual
29

Well part of this is you haven’t explicitly stated your process. So, at the risk of telling you things you already know:

@geek2nurse is dead on if you’re moving your jig or art to try to line up to the camera.

If you’re following proper basic jig technique:

  1. you first lock down your uncut jig material so it can’t move
    a. Your jig material cannot move again. Do not move it until you’re done using it.
  2. Align the jig design over your jig material using camera alignment.
    a. At this point you never move your design in the app again.
  3. cut your jig voids
  4. open the machine, remove the jig waste pieces.
  5. lay your target material (your watch bands) in place.
    a. again, do not move your jig material
  6. turn off the jig cuts and turn on your engraves.
    a. In case the memo was missed, do not move your art in the UI at any time after 2.a. If the camera looks off, ignore it, @geek2nurse is correct.
  7. engrave your bands. The alignment should be as perfect as the fit of your jig to the bands.
  8. remove your finished pieces.
  9. (optional) return to step 5. As long as you don’t move any art or jigs, you can engrave more and more bands without cutting a jig for them.

There are advanced techniques that can also yield better results.

For example, the crumb tray can move and wiggle if you’re rough with it. There are “boots” you can print from @timjedwards that can lock your tray in place pretty well. Since you’re doing lots of jig work, I’d recommend them.

You can use a reusable double jig design, it’ll save you time and materials.

Learn how to effectively use corner jigging to make material placement simpler and faster.

Use autofocus to speed the overall job process. Run autofocus while you’re adjusting settings. Then when you hit the print button, it starts very quickly.

Maximize your number of bands in your jig so that you can run more at once. Fewer job setups means less time spent fiddling with the jigs and jobs in the UI.

Anyway, if anything I’m telling you here is news, I’d suggest searching the forum for more on it and then asking any specific questions you have. There are lots of us who frequently use jigs – if you are following the basic techniques and your machine is performing properly it should be dead on.

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