Rotary Engraving a Yoyo on my Glowforge

are there assembly instructions anywhere? I see a bunch of finger joint pieces but I don’t have a clue how it’s supposed to work. :smiley:

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Take a look at the photos and videos above. That will show you how the pieces fit together. When gluing the pieces together, be sure to not leave excessive residue buildup in the corners, to ensure the guides will fit snugly and flush against the internal surfaces. The two small pieces with the hole in them screw to the sides of the gantry and allow the slots in the ends to ride up and down for adjusting the height of the work piece. I placed boards underneath the fixture (see video) to position smaller work pieces in the right focus range.

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Hello! I am so interested in this, but I am having trouble fitting this all onto a piece of draftboard. When I upload the file, I have to scale it down to fit into the printable area, and then it is not long enough to reach the edges of the machine when I put it together. Any advice?

It just barely fits within the cut window on my Pro machine. What machine do you have? Rather than scaling it, just give it a slight nudge left or right, up or down. Let me know if that still doesn’t work.

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Thanks. I have the basic machine. Just can’t wiggle it on there. I downsized and Shimmed the length by 3/4 inch. Putting it together now

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I just finished an updated version that will fit more easily within the cut window.

I also added two additional screw holes to the guide tabs that will offset the centerline of the fixture forward or backward a 1/4 inch from the focal point. This will help to handle slightly larger objects. When attaching the guide tabs, ensure orientation is such that the screw is at the top of the tab. To shift the fixture forward for larger items, orient the tab such that the the two offset holes are at the top, and place the screw through the hole closest to the back of the machine.

You will need to modify the width of the slots in the positioning guides to match the rolling diameter of your object, using the formula in the design file.

Fixture_4a

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Continuous improvement and a nice updated share. :+1: Thanks for doing that.

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Thank you for sharing so generously.

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I’m just as impressed today as I was the first time you posted about this :two_hearts:.

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This is a really impressive bit of engineering/ingenuity.

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Any chance you could repost the videos? Would love to see this in action.

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Totally missed this! So clever.

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I was wondering when someone else would figure this out. well done.

I made one of these a few years back that was similar, and was hoping to publish it in the catalog, but it never arrived before I got a bigger laser.

There are retaining bolt holes used to hold the gantry in place during shipping that you can attach to your carriage, which it looks like was done here. I personally used two pieces of acrylic down the sides with rubber rollers that spanned the distance between the two that would hold the object to be engraved, that were height and gap adjustable. It helped prevent the object from skidding on the bottom and ensured rotation.

This is cool. Im glad to see someone else putting this idea out there.

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Fixed video links. Apparently Dropbox blocked the links, because traffic was too high. I switched to YouTube. Enjoy!

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Nice! Yes, I am utilizing the retaining bolt holes in the gantry. I had initially considered rollers also, but due to my tight deadline, I couldn’t wait to source some. Rollers have definite advantages, and some disadvantages. The primary advantages are that rollers will provide a more consistent engrave, and they don’t require you to reverse the engraving image. I’d love to see your setup.

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sadly it was discarded in the move last year, and never rebuilt because I have a larger format laser with rotary built in (I dont even use that rotary). Ill see if I have any photos in my camera roll from around the time I built it. It was when I still had a pre-release unit I think.

I also uploaded a video on the forums right around the time I was building it with the inspiration I used to build that one. Ill see if that video is still here.

As for build details, I was using thin .5" gray conduit from home depot with plasti-dip sprayed over it. Those ran the length of the bed, along with a couple hollow metal rods to keep things in place. The sides were acrylic and slide adjustable to allow for different sized objects.

I was also looking into a version that disconnected the belts from the gantry and just left the head in place for larger objects, because I was concerned about it hitting the front. However, I never spent enough time doing rotary past the prototype stage to see if any large objects would ever get that far. Just thought id throw that out there as a possibility. Its also a bit more of a pain to attach/detach the belts though.

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here it is, way back from 2016:

I did NOT use big acrylic discs on the bars though.

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What size machine screws/bolts fit in the threaded holes on the gantry? Thanks for design idea, so awesome!

Thanks! You will need two M8x1.25 by 10-15mm long.
It’s listed on the SVG file here: Rotary Engraving a Yoyo on my Glowforge

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Oh, there we go, the file I had downloaded was Fixture_3 or something and it wasn’t in there, I didn’t know about this file, thank you!