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Bill George
03-20-2015, 6:26 PM
Trying to understand the process for those lasers with Print Driver job control. I imagine its the same on Epilog, Trotec and my question is for the older version of ULS laser V460.

So you do your graphic job and want to send to the machine. Bring up the Print Driver and do your settings and then download to the laser. Is there anyway to Save all that setup and graphic in a File on your computer so you don't have to do the Same Setup all over again? So you go to that File on the computer, open in Corel draw, download to the machine and its running?

Kev Williams
03-20-2015, 7:35 PM
Doesn't your driver have a "save" setting?
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Bill George
03-20-2015, 7:59 PM
Doesn't your driver have a "save" setting?


I was just asking question, don't have the machine and wondering? So it can Save the file but does that mean the entire file graphics and all with settings used for it, or just the current settings?

The way my current machine works, the BMP or DXF file is brought into the program and you assign areas to be Raster engraved or Vector cut with power and speed settings. You Save that file and all those settings along with the graphics are Saved with the file, ready to be downloaded to the machine or saved to your Hard Drive. Does the ULS Printer Driver do the same thing?

Samuel Espy
03-20-2015, 11:30 PM
The Universal Control Panel (UCP) refers to it as a print cache and I believe the default is set to save 2000 jobs (on the PC), but that number can be changed. The total job is saved which includes the graphics and all settings. One can repeat any of these jobs directly from the UCP via the print cache. By the way, you can download and play with the UCP (sending jobs to it from a graphics package and learn the interface) before you receive your laser. That is what I did before mine arrived.

Kev Williams
03-21-2015, 1:14 AM
The ULS save function on mine just saves whatever settings the driver has set at that time. Every color, speed setting, DPI, throughput, power, halftone, optimization, raster direction, virtually every driver setting will be saved. And the settings are saved to a file of your choice on your hard drive. I have a bazillion settings saved, like rowmark Black, romark red, romark white for the basics, and I also have a bazillion jobs saved for specific customers or parts.

Essentially, WHAT I'm engraving is saved in Corel, and HOW it's engraved is saved in the driver settings. For specific jobs, I just name the settings the same as I named the job I saved in Corel. For example, I have one particular repeating job that uses 6 colors, 5 of them vectored, all different powers & speeds... All I do is call up the job in Corel, hit "print", hit the "load" button on the driver panel, load the settings for that job, send it to the machine, and hit the start button. No fuss...

Ironically, I can't seem to figure out how to do this with my Chinese Lasersoft program. All my job settings are stored on notepads and stickys... ;)

Bill George
03-21-2015, 8:57 AM
Well I guess either way would work with the ULS system. If I can do the settings and name for the material or job that would be fine. On my Chinese laser its as above, and I just do a Save As and the entire job is saved with the processed graphic and settings which works great. I can then transport to my Shop computer on a USB flash drive. Or I have the entire setup out there to design if needed.

Maybe I will load the driver on this Win 7 laptop and try it out. I was assuming it had to have a machine connected for it to install correctly.
Thank you both for the replies, it really helped.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 9:13 AM
The Universal Control Panel (UCP) refers to it as a print cache and I believe the default is set to save 2000 jobs (on the PC), but that number can be changed. The total job is saved which includes the graphics and all settings. One can repeat any of these jobs directly from the UCP via the print cache. By the way, you can download and play with the UCP (sending jobs to it from a graphics package and learn the interface) before you receive your laser. That is what I did before mine arrived.

That's the way the new software works, but Bill's asking about legacy software for an older machine. It doesn't do the 2000 jobs thing.

Bill, even with the new software, we still use the same technique Kev is saying. We have a materials database built up and saved for all various materials. From Corel, we just hit print, open the preferences, then pick the material we are cutting, hit print and it's headed to the laser. The difference is, on the new software, it goes into a queue and you can just use those files in the queue to rerun any jobs you want, or see what settings were used on that job you did 2 weeks ago, or even open that job from 2 weeks ago and save the material settings into the database to be used in the future. The older software doesn't let you do that.

Samuel Espy
03-21-2015, 9:47 AM
Ah. Sorry I missed that it was a legacy driver/software.

Bill George
03-21-2015, 9:52 AM
Well I did get the ULS Print Driver loaded on this laptop and its going to have a learning curve but nothing I can't handle. I had pretty large order, at least for me come in yesterday and I am thinking another one is coming in Monday. So things are looking up. Once again thanks to all who replied, it has really helped.

Lee DeRaud
03-21-2015, 10:32 AM
So you go to that File on the computer, open in Corel draw, download to the machine and its running?Short answer to that question is no. The Corel file doesn't save any print info except page layout...it can't even remember what printer the file was sent to last time it was open.

Bill George
03-21-2015, 10:43 AM
Short answer to that question is no. The Corel file doesn't save any print info except page layout...it can't even remember what printer the file was sent to last time it was open.

Lee, I guess now that I sort of understand what I will need to do is Save the Print Driver settings for each job or each material being done. Like I have a customer for the LaserMag material. It just so happens the Black takes less power to Raster than the Gold or Sliver.. So I will take the Job and set up the Print Driver for each material, like jobnamegold.xxx and jobnameblack.xxx and so on. I usually make a Folder for each customer and then under that another Folder for their job name.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 11:22 AM
Bill, step back one more step. Don't save it as the jobnameblack.xxx, save it as :

LaserMag-Black
LaserMag-Gold

Then, no matter what the job, you can call up the material based on the material, not the job.

Bill George
03-21-2015, 11:43 AM
Bill, step back one more step. Don't save it as the jobnameblack.xxx, save it as :

LaserMag-Black
LaserMag-Gold

Then, no matter what the job, you can call up the material based on the material, not the job.
Your right of course. Is there a way to copy or back up all these files? I am assuming someday I will have a large amount of Setup files.
Just figured that one out, it Saves in the same Folder as the Job. Windows tagged it as a AutoCAD LT Layer file but all the info is readable as TXT file and makes sense.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 12:04 PM
Bill, I can't say for sure on the legacy one, but on ours, I just made a folder that is "Material Settings" and I keep every material setting in there. That folder is backed up every so often. That keeps all my materials together and they aren't job dependent, although every once in a while, I will modify one for special needs and save it in the materials folder noted that it's for that one customer.

Bill George
03-21-2015, 1:00 PM
So the ULS Print Driver takes the native Corel Draw file and does the engraving and cutting without the need to Save As or Export as a BMP or DXF?

So what happens when you already have a file as a DXF, do you just Import into Corel Draw and let the Print Driver do as a DXF or does it need to be converted to the native Corel Draw format by Saving?

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 1:39 PM
So the ULS Print Driver takes the native Corel Draw file and does the engraving and cutting without the need to Save As or Export as a BMP or DXF?

So what happens when you already have a file as a DXF, do you just Import into Corel Draw and let the Print Driver do as a DXF or does it need to be converted to the native Corel Draw format by Saving?

It doesn't care. You can print from Microsoft Excel if you want. You literally can print from anything.

It takes whatever you are printing from, Word, Excel, CorelDraw, etc, and it pulls the settings for that file from the material database you assign in the printing preferences when you are "printing" it.

It doesn't marry the settings with the graphic. There's no need to do that. If it did that and you had the same image but used it for different projects, you'd have to have different files saved for every variation. This way, it's one graphic file, and you decide what you want to print it to (substrate wise) at the time of printing and it's done.

Does that answer the question, or did I misunderstand the question?

Bill George
03-21-2015, 1:56 PM
So I think that's it Scott, I have an Image viewing program I love to use. Assuming it has a Print function it will print the file as whatever it is, BMP or DXF or whatever. Yes it does have a Print function and it (V460) comes up. Interesting.
The program, a Graphics viewing one, does not really work at least for images with layers. Just sees it as a DXF without the vector cutting hairline outline.

Scott Shepherd
03-21-2015, 1:59 PM
Granted, you won't be able to vector from that viewer, I don't think (haven't tried), but my guess is it would only engrave from things like that.