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View Full Version : GCC - activating Cluster saves Engraving time



Andrea Weissenseel
06-08-2011, 2:06 AM
Yesterday I had to engrave metal trays. The engraving is 7cm x 15cm (H/W) - on the left side a round logo, on the right 3 small text rows - alltogether not much to engrave. BUT I ran 3 of the trays at once and it took 52 min to do those 3 :eek: I remembered that I've seen that "Cluster" function in the printer driver and tried this out for the first time - it saved me 20 min engraving time on the next 3 trays - Incredible

Rodne Gold
06-08-2011, 2:19 AM
Yeh , its especially good if you have a lot of small graphics spread thinly around the engraving area , We generally leave it on with a sort of median cluster distance setting , like 30 or 50mm or something like that , it kinda "automatically" kicks in.

Robert Farrell
06-08-2011, 7:14 PM
Hi I have to do a series of these, I have made a template for 16. How would using cluster help and what setting do i have to put in. Is the distance in inches the distance between each item? The sample pic was done with cermark LMM 6000. I am using a Laserpro 30W . Robert197331

Richard Rumancik
06-08-2011, 8:32 PM
Cluster will help if you have an array of objects where there is a wide vertical "white space" between graphic zones. In your case, if only the center logo was being engraved, then you could use cluster to walk down the columns engraving the logo, instead of rastering the full width of the group of columns. But since your graphic goes almost right to the edge of the part, they could be positioned very closely together in the array. So there would be almost no vertical white space between them. As a result, cluster mode would not save any time for this job and may actually work against you.

Andrea Weissenseel
06-09-2011, 12:57 AM
I agree with Richard, in this case activating clusters would not help. Most of the engraving is your middle logo, the numbers on the "teeth" increase the width only minimal. I find that the laser is extremely slowing down, the wider the engraving area gets (at least my Spirit does)

Robert Farrell
06-09-2011, 9:51 AM
Thanks, I tested the cluster function, it works great. I stepped and repeated the artwork, 4 rows, 4 columns, with them ungrouped(did not work grouped). I send to laser, each item was lasered individually, item by item, row by row, exactly what I needed, plus less work for my motors.

Richard Rumancik
06-10-2011, 12:24 PM
Hi Robert . . . when you say that it worked, did you mean that you got the function to work or it actually saved time? I originally did not expect it would reduce job time, but now that I look at it again I see that the "white space" between parts is hourglass-shaped. So by invoking cluster mode you are not having to raster over this white space. So conceivably it could save time but it's still not obvious to me which way it would go; did you time it both ways?

When you say "less work on the motors" . . . seems to me that cluster mode actually means a bit more wear-and-tear on the motors, as there will be a lot more motor reversals for a given job. Bearings wear out faster then they have to reverse direction a lot, especially when making small travels. So I think that using cluster mode could actually reduce life of the motors, but if it saves a lot of engraving time, the tradeoff may be worth it.

There is also one advantage to cluster mode in some cases, even if it does not actually save job time. If your laser glitches doing 4 across (or 10 across) you lose all the parts. In cluster mode, you might lose only one part if you catch it quickly. So for critical jobs that aren't production-proven it might be considered.