Epilog Mini 24 Cutting/Travel physical speeds 40w

[Shane Archie]

Hi, I'm trying to find out the actual physical speed when cutting/engraving with the laser. i.e If I stipulate the speed at 100% what speed does it actually move at when cutting and jogging. It's a bit of a strange question but I'd like to try and calculate cutting times using a cad program but obviously need the speed in a unit of measure like 50mm/sec etc to use as a baseline.

Regards,
Shane.

[Dave Sheldrake]

From the manual


Because there are many factors that influence the time it takes to engrave or cut a given image, the Speed settings were designed to be reference numbers only. The
Speed setting scale of 1% to 100% is not linear – i.e. 100% speed will not be twice as
fast as 50% speed. This non-linear scale is very useful in compensating for the
different factors that affect engraving time, but using speed to predict a jobs
engraving time is not practical.

cheers

Dave

[Shane Archie]

Thanks Dave. Next question... how do other people go about calculating the time it would take to complete a job? Usually when I use my CNC Spindle, I can get an estimated job time but haven't come across the same function when laser cutting on the Epilog.

Shane.

[Dan Hintz]

ULS machines provide an estimate (which is easily within a couple of % after a couple of timed runs). I'm surprised Epilogs don't at this point...

[Mike Lysov]

You can make any shape, replicate it a few times and then run this job with open lid with different speeds to measure time it takes to do it at each speed.

Just do not do it with one shape because some of the time will be spent on moving from home and back and this time can be significant for just one small simple shape.

And I guess you have some tool to measure total length of all curves in your job. Without it doing a square as a shape may be an option.

[Tim Bateson]

Speed also varies with the DPI. DPI of 150 is much faster than 600. I once had a 12x24 raster + a few small vector cuts that lasted almost 3 hours.

[Keith Upton]

Speed also varies with the DPI. DPI of 150 is much faster than 600. I once had a 12x24 raster + a few small vector cuts that lasted almost 3 hours.

I know this is an old post, but that is some good info Tim. I'll have to experiment with some of my products and see how lowering the DPI effects both the speed and look of the items.

[Dan Hintz]

I know this is an old post, but that is some good info Tim. I'll have to experiment with some of my products and see how lowering the DPI effects both the speed and look of the items.

For clarity, we're talking about reduced LPI reducing engraving time, not DPI (though there's always a lot of confusion and re-use of the term DPI for LPI). A reduced LPI means the gantry moves farther with each completed line of engraving. If it takes you 1 second to complete a line, a 1,000 LPI setup will take 1,000 seconds to do an inch worth of lines... at 75LPI, well, it's 75 seconds for the same inch (and likely looks horrible).

EDIT: I'll add the caveat "Machines should work this way." If increased DPI slows down your engraving times, it means your machine cannot output pulses at 100% speed, which is a bad thing (gotta wonder if some of the Chinese machines do this).

[Keith Upton]

Oh, okay then. Here I was hoping I had found a way to shave a few minutes off of my engraving times just by lowering the DPI. lol

[Steve Clarkson]

Keith.......... Tim was correct....lowering the DPI will allow you to shave time off. I just did a job that took 24 minutes at 100P/45S/600DPI and by simply decreasing the DPI to 400 (100P/45S/400DPI) it only took 17 minutes. It does affect the quality of the engraving, but depending on the material, you might not notice.

[Scott Shepherd]

Keith.......... Tim was correct....lowering the DPI will allow you to shave time off. I just did a job that took 24 minutes at 100P/45S/600DPI and by simply decreasing the DPI to 400 (100P/45S/400DPI) it only took 17 minutes. It does affect the quality of the engraving, but depending on the material, you might not notice.

Take your beam slightly out of focus and it'll make up for the lower resolution to some degree.

[Keith Upton]

Keith.......... Tim was correct....lowering the DPI will allow you to shave time off. I just did a job that took 24 minutes at 100P/45S/600DPI and by simply decreasing the DPI to 400 (100P/45S/400DPI) it only took 17 minutes. It does affect the quality of the engraving, but depending on the material, you might not notice.

Oh, so I can shave a bit of time off. At this early point in my engraving endeavors, I've been pretty much engraving everything at 600DPI. A lot of my product is just lines and smallish text (mostly numbers). I think I should be able to do those at a lower DPI with out losing too much in quality.


Take your beam slightly out of focus and it'll make up for the lower resolution to some degree.

Does it matter if it's up or down on the focus?

[Keith Upton]

I dropped my DPI to 400 and it shaved off nearly 15 minutes on my 12x24 sheet! However, the contrast was not good enough any longer. I ended up keeping the DPI at 400, but decreasing my speed some to get more contrast. This resulted in about a 10 minute per sheet time savings. Thanks guys!

[Ross Moshinsky]

Changing DPI is a linear increase/decrease. What takes 10 minutes at 600dpi will take 6.67mins at 400dpi.

Personally, I very rarely engrave under 500dpi. I've found that to be the sweet spot for quality. Anything more than 500dpi I rarely see much of a difference. Anything less than 500dpi the quality starts dropping below what I consider acceptable. It's actually better to run small text at a higher dpi to get the quality. Photos are the only thing I run regularly at below 500dpi.

With that said, whatever works for you works. I run trophy plates at 400dpi because even though the clarity of the engraving is a bit lower than I'd like, the 20% savings in time is something I can justify.

[Keith Upton]

I had thought about trying 500 DPI to see if it was a happy middle ground, but I can't select that in the Epilog dashboard :(

[Mike Null]

Lowering the DPI does not increase the speed of the machine. The speed remains as you have set it. The engraving time will be less because the laser head travels fewer times across the job.

282505

[Keith Upton]

Thanks for the graphics and clearing up the why Mike... great knowledge to have.

[John Pletcher]

I have found that if I switch the dithering pattern from standard to stucki when running at a DPI less than 600, that I get great results, give it a try Keith

[Keith Upton]

Thanks for the tip John. I just checked and I have been running Stucki. May have to play with the different dithering patterns and see how they effect the engravings.