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Tony Schick
11-20-2014, 2:15 AM
At our Fab Lab we have several computers feeding (over a network) our Trotec Speedy 300 via a single control computer (connected to the Trotec). I realise it sounds a bit wacky but we have a number of clients who actually use the machine under instruction.

The idea is first-in-first-served and we want them all (only three actually) to feed the single queue, and have the connected machine process them in order.

The common spool folder is on a shared network drive and all the machines have this same folder configured in Job Control settings.

The problem is that the jobs show up in the correct queue, but as soon as you try to move it to the plate, the JC software (V10.3.0) hangs.

Has anyone done this successfully, or know how to do it?

Thanks.

Gene Howard
11-20-2014, 8:45 AM
We do exactly this, not only sharing a common spool folder among multiple job-sending workstations but between two Speedy setups as well.

If you're having a hang on moving jobs to the plate I would check that the user account for the engraving computer has proper permissions to the networked spool folder. When you move a job from the queue to the plate JobControl literally moves the *.tsf file from the [NetworkLocation]\Spool folder to the [LocalLocation]\Work folder. If there are insufficient permissions for JobControl to delete/move the file from the network folder to the local work folder you will run into various hang/crash issues.

Check if you can browse to the network spool folder from the engraving computer and delete or move files from there. If you run into any permission issues check that both the share AND folder security permissions on the networked folder are set correctly. A lot of times the share permissions are correct while the folder security only allows read/write/modify but not delete.

Tony Schick
11-24-2014, 5:33 PM
Thanks Gene, I'm back at work on Thursday. I'll check that.

Tony Schick
11-27-2014, 7:34 PM
Yep, that was it. Well, not quite, the machine that had he shared drive was flakey. We now have a NAS that works perfectly. Thanks for the help.
I'm now chasing a solution to shared materials settings. When you send a JC job to another machine, the settings don't go with it.
I've put a separate post seeking guidance. If you know where the materials database is kept, can you share it with me?

Thanks
Tony

Tony Schick
12-04-2014, 6:30 PM
Well, it seems my celebration was premature. The "NAS working perfectly" should have read "for a while"!

Yesterday it bogged down with bloated spool files.

If I set the spool folder (in JC) to the shared drive on the network, a typical job would bloat to about 9MB - enough to bog it down.
When I reset the spool folder to the local drive the print job was normal size - around 1.2MB.

How can sending a spool file across a network bloat the files so much?

Any help gratefully accepted!

Cheers
Tony

Scott Shepherd
12-04-2014, 7:13 PM
Tony, were they from the same machine? Spool file sizes are increased a HUGE amount if you use "Color" as your choice for output (we use it because we use various colors to control the workflow). I have seen very simple files that were 50k files in Corel get to 100's of MB by using color as the mode. Change that to Black and White mode and it's a really small file in the spool file.

And to clarify, 9MB file in the spool shouldn't be a problem at all. I honestly have had 300-400MB files in my spool file and they worked fine.

Tony Schick
12-04-2014, 10:33 PM
Thanks Scott, We always use the color setting and, yes, they were from the same machine.

I must say I was surprised that a 9MB file would upset the JC software so much, but it seemed to be the case. When we started JC if there was a spool file in the folder of 9MB or so then it became unresponsive. As soon as we removed the spool file it came good. I assumed that the file size had something to do with it. Maybe it's something else.

I have Trotec Job Control on my computer at home (but I don't have the laser of course) and I can't replicate the problem from here. I have tried setting a spool folder on my home network NAS server (Seagate, same as the one at Fab Lab) and the file sizes are the same as for the local spool folder - and small.

One thing I did try was the black and white setting - you're right, it was much smaller.
In what way do you control workflow with color? We only use color to map power and speed settings for vectors.

Cheers
Tony

Gene Howard
12-05-2014, 8:07 AM
Hi Tony,

As far as I know you can still use vector color-mapping with black & white mode. Our line of business involves sending up to 12" x 24" 500dpi raster art to JobControl for engraving & cutting, spool files rarely exceed 2MB.

According to the poorly translated JobControl X manual: Color Mode "Is used when several engraving colors are to be employed or halftoning has already been performed in the application program." Since you are using color only for vectors it sounds like Black & White Mode should work fine for your jobs.

Tony Schick
12-10-2014, 7:13 PM
We do exactly this, not only sharing a common spool folder among multiple job-sending workstations but between two Speedy setups as well.

<snip>

Is it as simple as just setting the spool folder in the various copies of the JC software?

Ours works OK until there is more than one copy of JC running simultaneously, that's when it bogs down.

Seems the file size issue I described elsewhere was a (unintentional) red herring. If the control machine is the only one running JC then it handles large files quite ok.

But of course, that still defeats the purpose of the exercise - that is to have multiple machines feeding Trotec jobs to the one control computer.

Cheers
Tony