PDA

View Full Version : trotec job control question



Don Corbeil
03-20-2015, 4:46 PM
I had a question about a few features in the job control platform (v 10.3.0.11).
If you go into the material database window (where you select power, speed, PPI, etc), on the far right side under the 'advanced' tab dropdown, there are a few custom selections there that I would like to know more about. These selections are correction (which defaults to 10), IPC (choices: off, speed, accuracy), and lastly raster correction (checked or unchecked).

Has anyone tinkered with these much, and under what circumstances?

Dan Hintz
03-20-2015, 5:03 PM
IPC = Intelligent Path Control.

Scott Shepherd
03-20-2015, 6:45 PM
I had a question about a few features in the job control platform (v 10.3.0.11).
If you go into the material database window (where you select power, speed, PPI, etc), on the far right side under the 'advanced' tab dropdown, there are a few custom selections there that I would like to know more about. These selections are correction (which defaults to 10), IPC (choices: off, speed, accuracy), and lastly raster correction (checked or unchecked).

Has anyone tinkered with these much, and under what circumstances?

Hi Don, great questions! Glad you are diving deeper into the driver. It's very powerful. Some answers will be confusing, because they changed it up a little.

Correction used to be used for vector only. It was the setting that told the machine how much of a percentage to slow down when going through tight spots. In the manual, there's a test showing how to set that. It can be different for different materials since they don't all react the same when burning. As a general rule, there's not much need to mess with it unless you have a specific reason to.

However, a couple of updates ago, they changed that to affect the rastering as well. Now (I might not be saying this technically right, but the results are right), is bumps the power up at the ends of engraving. For some sensitive materials at high speeds, you can get the edges fading out slightly if you have High Quality turned off. If you bump up the correction, it should apply more power at the ends of the stroke, if I remember it's behavior correctly. In general, I don't use it often, but every so often, on small text, I'll use it if I'm seeing any details fading out, but overall, I personally don't use it much.

IPC, as Dan described, is Intelligent Path Control. It's another setting that's used to fix certain issues. The explanation I got from the guy that wrote the software was to imagine you have a sports car and you are traveling through the mountains on curvy roads. If you are manually driving, you speed up on the straight parts and slow down on the curves. If you put IPC on, then it's like setting a cruise control where it smooths out the speeds, so the speeds on the straight away will go down, and the speed on the curves will be controlled as well. His exact words to me was not to use it unless I had specific problems. He said it wasn't meant as an every day tool, it was a tool designed to fix a specific issue some customers were having with their products, if I remember right.

Raster Correction, I can't remember off the top of my head, but I don't think I've ever used that either.

Only one I have used from time to time is the correction, and I used it mainly for vectoring, when some times you are vector cutting things and the corners don't go all the way through. If you bump that value up, it can make the cut even all the way around. And I do use it every so often on special cases for rastering, now that it's used for that too. But that only works on 10.3 and up, I think. I do know they added the functionality to it fairly recently.

Hope that helps a little.

Don Corbeil
03-20-2015, 10:11 PM
This is helpful, and actually has information that that would have been applicable on a recent vector cut that was rather complex, with many sharp angles. I had to bring out the exacto knife on a few corners.

So if I understand correctly, 'correction', when used with vector cutting can help insure that tight corners, angles, etc are thoroughly cut through. I have occasionally seen where this can be a problem cutting certain complex shapes. The default is 10, so perhaps in some cases bumping that up for a complex cut would be appropriate. However, I'm not sure how high the values go up to or what they relate to specifically. It sounds like it can be used with rastering, although I haven't seen edges fading yet, at least I haven't noticed. Perhaps I may run a few trials with small text as a comparison.

Steve, your explanation on IPC is a great analogy to help understand it, at least as far as vector cutting. So, if I were to select speed, IPC would adjust the overall control to reduce process time. With accuracy checked, I assume it may slow things down in order to achieve more precise results. I'm guessing the default is somewhere in between. Is IPC only applied during vector cutting?

I usually always have High Quality checked in job control, except perhaps for vector cuts. I say to myself, why not? Is high quality actually used in vector cutting as well?

Yes, a lot of questions... Thank you for your patience... The manual has been a good start, but it's lacking in detailed information that you can get from someone whose actually used these features. Many thanks.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 9:07 AM
This is helpful, and actually has information that that would have been applicable on a recent vector cut that was rather complex, with many sharp angles. I had to bring out the exacto knife on a few corners.

So if I understand correctly, 'correction', when used with vector cutting can help insure that tight corners, angles, etc are thoroughly cut through. I have occasionally seen where this can be a problem cutting certain complex shapes. The default is 10, so perhaps in some cases bumping that up for a complex cut would be appropriate. However, I'm not sure how high the values go up to or what they relate to specifically. It sounds like it can be used with rastering, although I haven't seen edges fading yet, at least I haven't noticed. Perhaps I may run a few trials with small text as a comparison.

Steve, your explanation on IPC is a great analogy to help understand it, at least as far as vector cutting. So, if I were to select speed, IPC would adjust the overall control to reduce process time. With accuracy checked, I assume it may slow things down in order to achieve more precise results. I'm guessing the default is somewhere in between. Is IPC only applied during vector cutting?

I usually always have High Quality checked in job control, except perhaps for vector cuts. I say to myself, why not? Is high quality actually used in vector cutting as well?

Yes, a lot of questions... Thank you for your patience... The manual has been a good start, but it's lacking in detailed information that you can get from someone whose actually used these features. Many thanks.

Yes Don, that's exactly what correction will do for you on vectoring. If I remember right, it's a percentage value of the slowdown (10=10%), but don't hold me to that explanation. It was explained to me once in a general conversation about something else, and I'm not sure I retained that information correctly, but I think that's what it was. You can go up to 100%, I think. It's certainly not uncommon to be in the 20 range for certain things, so I'd experiment when you have the issue and don't be afraid to just put number in and try it. It won't hurt anything.

I wouldn't say that IPC's goal is to reduce process time. I think it'll actually make the time go up because it's going to take action on all areas, rather than just the tight corners. You are welcome to try it, like correction, it's not going to hurt anything. I don't think you're going to see any visible difference or real time difference. My take on it is it's there as a fine tuning mechanism when certain circumstances present themselves.

No, High Quality isn't used in vector cutting, just rastering.

I agree, the manual needs a lot of work. It's almost more like a dictionary than a user manual when it comes to some features. IPC is one of those. How about explaining when and where one would use IPC, with examples? It can be frustrating, since we, as users, are trying to use the machines and all their options but there's no portal to get educated on the features and their uses. I was lucky enough to get to speak directly to the "Father of Job Control X" in Austria for about an hour a couple year back. The call was scheduled, so I had a list of things written down and I asked everything I could in the time I had with him. Some things I thought were problems, were just me not understanding some features, and once explained, it really changed things for me. I wish we (users) had more open access to him or his co-workers, even if through nothing more than a forum with restricted access, where we could ask questions and get answers from the core people that wrote it.

I have several bugs I've seen and I've turned them in for over 2 years now and every new release still has those bugs. Nothing major, but it when I spoke to the guy before, I told him of a couple of bugs and he said he was completely unaware of them and he'd fix them. It feels like there's not a great conduit for getting issues directly to the people responsible for fixing them.

Don Corbeil
03-21-2015, 10:52 AM
Steve, thanks for the information.
I also agree with you on the support issues. There are a number of features that are in the JC that one cannot find much information on, and can often only be answered by someone in tech support who really knows the software. Not knocking Trotec, but from my experience not everyone in tech support (in US) has a mastery of the software's more obscure features. I've spoken with a couple who do, but then I can never reach them consistently. Questions often have to be filtered up the chain.




I agree, the manual needs a lot of work. It's almost more like a dictionary than a user manual when it comes to some features. IPC is one of those. How about explaining when and where one would use IPC, with examples? It can be frustrating, since we, as users, are trying to use the machines and all their options but there's no portal to get educated on the features and their uses. I was lucky enough to get to speak directly to the "Father of Job Control X" in Austria for about an hour a couple year back. The call was scheduled, so I had a list of things written down and I asked everything I could in the time I had with him. Some things I thought were problems, were just me not understanding some features, and once explained, it really changed things for me. I wish we (users) had more open access to him or his co-workers, even if through nothing more than a forum with restricted access, where we could ask questions and get answers from the core people that wrote it.

I have several bugs I've seen and I've turned them in for over 2 years now and every new release still has those bugs. Nothing major, but it when I spoke to the guy before, I told him of a couple of bugs and he said he was completely unaware of them and he'd fix them. It feels like there's not a great conduit for getting issues directly to the people responsible for fixing them.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 11:19 AM
Not knocking Trotec, but from my experience not everyone in tech support (in US) has a mastery of the software's more obscure features. I've spoken with a couple who do, but then I can never reach them consistently. Questions often have to be filtered up the chain.

Yeah, I hear you. I don't think my Job Control questions ever get answered. I was getting an error in Vector Optimizing, telling me I had too many objects to sort (which is what I thought the goal of Vector Optimizing was), and instead of "Send me the file and I'll get it off to Austria's programmers", I got "You need to sort it all in CorelDraw before sending it over". My response was "that's not possible, it's 1000's of objects", to which I was told "You should look at buying a third party nesting program".

Huh? So I should not try and use the tool designed to optimize things, which is included in the software and published as a feature, and I should buy a third party piece of software for a lot of money, because no one will actually take the time to contact Austria and report is as a bug?????

Don Corbeil
03-21-2015, 11:24 AM
Just a guess, but I think the folks who do know the software really well get promoted right out of tech support :p

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 11:31 AM
There are some people there that know it pretty well, but in all fairness, the end users spend a lot more time with it than their employees. I just wish there was a better way to get bugs fixed. That stupid popup that tells you the maximum plate size every time you enter and number needed to be fixed 2 years ago, and the vector cutting table shows "inches" as the label on the box, but the value inside it is metric. Apparently my honeycomb grid is 34 inches thick :confused:

Don't misunderstand me, these are just minor irritants, not "my machine isn't working" type of things, so overall, they still rock, just need to polish the edges a little and get some of those rough edges refined.

You'd think the software engineers from every single manufacturer would be members of this forum, reading and answering questions, which would help them quickly see customer needs and serious issues that need immediately attention. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen. It's nearly impossible to get to the software engineers at any company. When I have, I've always had great luck getting things resolved.