Positioning aids in the JobControl® laser software

Different jobs positioned wth one template

Are you sometimes unsure about the easiest way to position your graphic on the workpiece for laser engraving? We provide you with various options for supporting the Trotec JobControl laser software in order to quickly and reliably determine the desired position for laser engraving. This will allow you to save material waste and handling time while minimising the risk of mis-positioning your graphic.

1. Job preview: "WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get"

Click the "Eye" icon to activate the job preview.
When WYSIWYG is activated, all jobs positioned on the work surface will be displayed along with their graphical content. Move the laser head in the machine and the cross hairs in the software will move accordingly. Bidirectional communication between the laser and JobControl software makes it easier to position the graphic on the workpiece and serves as a further check prior to laser engraving.

Job preview allows you to see at a glance whether all desired cutting, engraving, positioning lines and pass marks, have been sent to the laser machine. Deactivated parameters in the material database (shown by colour) are not displayed in the "What you see is what you get" view either and thus not processed by the laser. This is used to check whether all desired elements have been sent to the laser and whether there are any undesired cutting lines. In the full view of the WYSIWYG display, however, all colours are displayed, which you use in the graphic regardless of what you have defined with parameters for the laser processing.

2. Guides

Entering coordinates - Guides for positioning

Guides make it easier to position your job on the work surface, if it is not in the 0/0 position. This allows you to use material more efficiently by minimising material waste. For recurring jobs, it is also advantageous to align these with leftover pieces on the upper edge, in order to increase efficiency, or you can use guides to align your job to the right or centre of your workpiece.

Guides are a very simple and efficient tool for precisely positioning your job where the material is on the table. To create a guide, press and hold the left mouse button on the respective work surface ruler while moving the mouse towards the work surface. You can also enter the exact position of the guide using coordinates.

3. Marker

Blue crosses show the markers on the work surface and serve as a positioning aid for jobs. Markers act "magnetically" on all corners and the centre of a job.

When processing recurring jobs in large quantities, individually or in a template, a marker helps to determine and save the positioning of the individual elements. Corner points or the centre of a job on the work surface can also be fixed using markers, similar to the procedure with the guides. However, a marker is particularly helpful for fixing the position on the work surface if the job has to be sent again because elements in the graphic have been forgotten and are subsequently added. The prerequisite for this is that the job size remains unchanged.

Markers can not only be set using the JobControl laser software, but also using the Home key directly on the keyboard of the laser machine. Press this button for approx. 3 seconds to define the position of the laser head as a marker and, temporarily, as a new starting position. This saves time, especially if the computer is not directly next to the laser machine.

Once the new starting position is fixed, the JobPosition function can define whether the job should be positioned in the centre or in the corners. Using the Home button, each job will then be automatically aligned in the desired position.

4. Job Position

The job position bar provides information about the X and Y position of the selected job on the work surface. A precise job positioning is possible through the manual input of the desired coordinates.

Depending on the import choice, coordinates are displayed in the top left corner or the centre of a job.

5. Save the work surface for recurring jobs

Save the entire work surface including the job, parameters, markers and guides as a pjx file. With just one click, you can open the job and all the settings are automatically loaded. This not only saves time, but application errors can be kept to a minimum, even for untrained operators.

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