Professional Engraving Systems

  

Xenetech Rotary Driver - by Jimmy DuBose

Have you ever wanted to output directly from *CorelDraw™ to your Xenetech rotary engraver? Xenetech’s Rotary Driver makes this output possible. Our driver will accept **HPGL (a.k.a .plt Plotter) files and files from Cadlink’s ***EngraveLab™ software. This driver allows you to send jobs to your engraver directly from your preferred design software. Adding the capability to output directly from alternate design software could save you valuable time in your production process.

Compatible third party software packages

Our customers that currently use this feature are typically using CorelDraw™ or EngraveLab™. However, any design software that can output a basic HPGL file will work with our rotary driver. Certain CAD programs use the selected plotter settings to format of the plotter file output and in certain cases, can vary the actual output from the desired result. Therefore, as standard practice, using a CAD program that supports a HP7400 series plotter should yield desirable output.

With what systems is the driver compatible?

Our rotary driver works with any Xenetech Microstepper or Viper rotary system. This includes any Xenetech rotary system manufactured since Summer 1993. If you have any questions regarding the compatibility of our rotary driver with your system, please contact Xenetech’s customer service department.

What does the driver do?

Everyone that is familiar with the operation of Xenetech Graphic Workstation should be very comfortable with the engraving operations offered by the driver.

After creating the plate layout, the driver will automatically recognize and convert layout data to Xenetech Job Data. System operators will be presented with the same F1 (Output To Engraver) screen that they are used to in XGW, offering full control over origin settings, XY speeds, Z speeds and stroke settings, and multiple pass setup.

 

How easy is it to setup?

After installing the driver, simply start the driver by double-clicking on the XenRDrvr icon found on your desktop. If you prefer, the driver can be set to run at the startup of your computer.

The driver runs in the background, but can be accessed from the Windows system tray at the lower right portion of your computer screen on the task bar.

 

Right-click on the rotary driver icon in your system tray and select Engraving Table defaults to setup the defaults for your table.

 

 

 

 

Select your table size and type. You can choose from Stepper, Servo, or Viper. After making any changes, you must click on Save Prefs (Save Preferences). The Source File Path is the folder where you will export the PLT file from your design software. You can choose any folder on your hard drive. However, you should not choose a folder that already contains PLT files. Viper owners should have their destination folder set the same folder as their inbox folder in Viperdriver or VCS.

 

The source file type can currently be set to two different options. Choose EngraveLab if your design software is EngraveLab. All other software options should use Basic HPGL.

 

 

 

 

 

How do I setup a Corel job for the driver?

As an example for using the Rotary Driver with HPGL output, here are the settings needed to output from CorelDraw.
First, you must set the plate size in Corel equal to the size of your table.

Create your layout. I recommend that your view should be set to Simple Wireframe since our driver will only accept vectors. This view only displays vectors.

Go to File menu and select Export.

You will need to save the file into the source folder setup in the driver and the file type will need to be set to PLT.


The first time that you export a PLT file you will need to set the Export settings according to the following screen shots.

After clicking on OK, the rotary driver will show you the Engraver setup screen shown below. Make any necessary changes and click on OK to send the job to your engraving system.

Remember, the rotary driver will only accept vectors. This means that raster files like bitmaps and the standard paint fills of True Type fonts will not output. All text will need a vector fill to engrave completely.

See, it's easy. Go ahead and use a tool you already know or simply add another program to your toolbox.

Our Rotary Driver gives you the flexibility to output direct to your Xenetech system. Try it for 21 days and see if it is a solution for you.

To download our Rotary Driver and try it for 21 days, visit the Xenetech Website.

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*CorelDraw
**HPGL – Hewlett Packard Graphics Language
***EngraveLab is a trademark of CadLink Corporation.