Missing Focus Setting in Epilog Mini Color Mapping

[Tony Schick]

Does anyone miss the focus setting in color mapping in the Epilog Mini dashboard?
It's there in the Zing, but not in the Mini. I asked them about it and they said that because the Mini has auto-focus they took it out.

Kinda doesn't make sense to me. regardless of how you focus at the start of the job, the color mapped setting is supposed to allow something other than the standard focus for some (but not other) parts of a job.


We like to do some vectors with a soft focus setting to thicken the line. It makes for better paint filling in acrylic.

Am I missing something?

Cheers
Tony

[Glen Monaghan]

First I have heard of that but I sure would like to be able to change focus with color mapping!

I never use auto focus (and removed the plunger because it interfered with a couple of repeat jobs and fixtures I have) anyway, and I have a recurring job that requires two passes with different focus settings that I currently have to do in phases: send 1st pass and engrave, manually refocus, send 2nd pass and engrave. Would love to reduce that to: send whole job and "wait" for it to finish ("wait" because I am cleaning/packing up the last batch and preparing the next batch while the current one is engraving, and often the manual refocus comes at an awkward time such as just after I've started the 3-handed packaging process that is best finished without interruption).

[Tony Schick]

On our Zing, there's a 4th slider inside color mapping. You can include a focus setting with any defined color - raster or vector. It's very handy and does exactly what you've said you want, but apparently they don't have it with auto-focus models. I've asked them to add it into a future update but I'm not holding my breath!
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[Dan Hintz]

Yeesh, who designs these GUIs... that's a terrible color scheme (and the failed attempt at 3D is just as bad) :-/ I'm starting to think all major equipment manufacturers use the same set of designers.

[Kev Williams]

allow me to sound stupid-- what is color mapping?

While I don't know what color mapping is (or why I'd need it), my LS900 WILL auto-adjust focus for different colors. Like, lately I've been engraving part numbers on plastic parts trays, and some of them have 4 different levels which are more than 1/8" different than the next level. I focus for the highest level, then determine the difference of the next levels. If each level is 1/8" different (in a perfect world), then the focused text I set black, then green for the next, then yellow, then blue. For each color you enter the difference from the original focus point. Green would be .125, yellow .25, blue .375. When the color change comes, the table raises those amounts and starts engraving that color.... etc... I really love that feature!

[Tony Schick]

Color mapping is when you specify colors in your artwork with RGB settings, say 255,0,0 for pure red, 0,0,255 for pure blue for example. Then in your laser drivers you set power and speed settings against each color. Say you wanted some vectors to cut (with high power, low speed) and other vectors to just etch (high speed, low power) you set them individually under color mapping. You can have individual settings for up to 16 colors for either raster, vector or both.

You seem to already be doing this with just focus. We can do this for focus AND power and speed settings on our Epilog Zing, but focus is missing from our larger Epilog Mini.