Rotary Marking¶

Mark cylindrical parts — tumblers, rings, shafts, pens — by rotating the part between marking passes. The galvo can only mark a flat window at a time, so FocuZ wraps your artwork around the part in splits: it marks one strip, rotates the part, marks the next strip, and so on until the whole design is on the surface.

Rotary marking always runs through the 2D Rotary action in the Sequencer — the action carries the job's part and split values, so nothing has to be switched on or off app-wide. The rotary hardware itself (motor, mode, axis) is configured once under Device ▸ Rotary Setup.

TODO screenshot: the Rotary Setup dialog

Rotary Setup¶

Settings¶

Invert Direction — flip the rotation direction for both jogging and marking.
Return to 0 — rotate back to the zero position when the job finishes (on by default). If a run is interrupted — cancelled or stopped for any reason — FocuZ always returns the rotary to zero so the part is never left at an arbitrary angle.
Mode — Chuck grips the part and turns it directly; Roller turns the part by spinning drive rollers underneath it (see Chuck vs. Roller).
Axis — which axis of the artwork wraps around the part (X or Y). Match it to how the rotary sits under the laser.
Gear Ratio — the drive ratio between motor and part, as n : 1. At 1 : 1 the motor's Steps/Rot is the part's steps per rotation; a 2 : 1 reduction means the motor turns twice per part rotation.
Roller Ø — in Roller mode, the drive rollers' diameter. Surface travel follows the roller, so both diameters matter: the part diameter for wrapping the artwork, the roller diameter for the motion math.

Part (defaults)¶

Diameter — a default part diameter for new 2D Rotary actions. Leave it blank if every job is a different part — each action carries its own diameter either way.

Split¶

Size (default) — a default strip width for new 2D Rotary actions, in mm of part surface. Smaller splits stay closer to the laser's focus and the field's sweet spot; larger splits mean fewer seams and faster jobs. Keep the strip shallow enough that its edges are still within your focus tolerance.
Overlap (default) — a default overlap between neighboring strips, in mm. A little overlap can hide seam lines in fills.

The three defaults only pre-fill a new 2D Rotary action's fields; a blank default leaves the action's field blank until you enter it there. - Overlap fills only (outlines marked once) — with an overlap set, fills keep the overlap but outlines are trimmed to the exact seam, so outline strokes are never double-marked. Use this when overlap helps your fills but doubles up your outlines. - Seam-aware splits (seams avoid geometry) — lets each seam shift a little (up to about a quarter of the split size) to land in the widest nearby gap in the artwork, so seams fall between letters and shapes instead of through them. - Arc compensation (correct curvature per split) — the laser projects each strip onto a flat plane, but the part surface curves away from it, so marks land slightly stretched near the strip edges. Arc compensation pre-corrects for the curvature so design distances land as true on-surface distances. The effect grows quickly with split size — it's what keeps geometry true when you use large splits, and it lets you size splits by focus alone.

Splits are always distributed evenly across the artwork, so the last strip is the same size as the rest — no thin leftover strip at the end. Before the first strip, the rotary takes up gear backlash by overshooting slightly and approaching from the marking direction, so the first seam lands exactly where it should.

Motor¶

Steps/Rot — motor steps per motor rotation (combine with Gear Ratio for the part).
Ramp Min / Max Speed — each rotation ramps from Ramp Min up to Max Speed, in pulses/sec. Ramp Min is the starting speed, not a limit — a heavy chuck or part may need a lower one to start smoothly without losing steps; a light setup can start faster.
Accel — acceleration ramp time, in ms.
Return Spd — speed used when returning to zero.

BJJCZ Controls¶

Live rotary motion for setup, available while the controller is connected: jog CCW / CW by the Jog Dist angle, Set Zero to define the current position as zero, and Go to Zero to rotate back to it at the Return Spd — with a live position readout.

Import Rotary from markcfg7… pulls rotary parameters from an existing markcfg7 file, the same way as the main device import. The Device Setup window (first-run setup) offers the same import in its Rotary Setup section — including reusing the device's own markcfg7 — so a rotary can be configured during first run.

The 2D Rotary action¶

The 2D Rotary action (in the Sequencer's Marking group) is a 2D Import that marks through the rotary engine — it's the one and only way a job runs on the rotary. It carries its own Rotary section above its content:

Part Diameter / Split Size / Overlap — the job's own values, saved with the project. They pre-fill from the Rotary Setup defaults when the action is created; fields with no default start blank. All three are required — the run and trace are blocked, with a message naming the missing field, until they're entered (an overlap of 0 counts as entered). Different actions (or different projects) can target different parts without touching the device setup.
Start Offset — optional, in part degrees: rotates the whole job's starting orientation on the part without changing the rotary's Set Zero position. Handy for marking at a specific clock position, or spacing repeat jobs around the same part. 0 (or blank) = none; Return to 0 still returns to the true zero.

Axis, mode, motor settings, and the split-quality options still come from Rotary Setup — the action carries only the job values. Because rotary is per-action, nothing is left switched on afterward — other actions and later jobs are unaffected.

Previewing splits¶

In the Preview of a 2D Rotary action, a vertical split slider appears beside the playback slider, with one stop per split:

By default the preview shows one split at a time, centered in the canvas — exactly the strip the galvo will see. Move the slider to step through the splits.
The horizontal playback slider and the split slider follow each other: scrubbing playback advances the split; picking a split jumps playback to that split's beginning.
The All button shows every split at once at its true position instead.

Seam-aware splits and arc compensation show up in the preview exactly as they will mark.

Sublayers in rotary jobs¶

Sublayers run inside each split, just as they do in flat marking — jog sublayers fire between passes, and cut sublayers mark their bands clipped to the current strip.

Chuck vs. Roller¶

Chuck — the part is gripped and rotated directly. One motor rotation (through the gear ratio) is one part rotation, regardless of part size.
Roller — the part rests on powered rollers. The rollers move the surface, so surface travel depends on the roller diameter, and how far the part turns depends on both diameters. Enter the part diameter and the roller diameter and FocuZ handles the conversion.