Kev Williams
02-16-2018, 2:52 AM
I have a repeat job, etching a logo onto clear anodized aluminum parts. The logo is about 10" long, so it's 2 setups. The logo has some very fat lettering and a design that connects between 2 letters. I've been getting these parts 6 to 10 at a time, about 5 times last year. The logo must be bright white. My cut routine: 45 and 135 'fast' hatches at .05 space, 1500 speed, 100 power 40 freq, and a 90° 'quality' pass at .04, 1500/100/80. They come out bright white...
Part 1 of the logo was taking 1:10 to engrave, and part 2 took 1:59, so 3:09 plus 'the turn' plus in & out. I've been using a piece of scrap Rowmark engraved with the outline of the logo, to place on the part and redlight its engraving for placement. Part 1 involved redlighting half the logo, part 2 I just redlighted one letter to get the spacing right. So 3:09 plus about 15 seconds for the turn, plus maybe 20 seconds to re-align the next part and start, so basically 3 minutes 45 seconds per piece. For what it is and what I'm charging, that's fine for 10 pieces.
So the other day I get 50 of these things. 50 x 3.75 minutes = 187 minutes, so about 3 hours 7 minutes to run 50 of these things...
What I did: the quality hatch must fully sweep objects, including dead air space, which can eat lots of time. In the logo where the shape connected to 2 letters, I found a spot to cut it apart and make it 2 pieces. Sweeping the 2 halves, because of their overall shapes, went a LOT faster. I also took hatch angle of the cleanup pass into consideration, running a 90 angle meant less overlapped segments to sweep, which saved more time. So once the hatch routine seemed optimized, I then increased the hatch spacing to .06mm for all 3 hatches, and increased the speed from 1500 to 2000.
The end result was I cut part 1 from 1:10 down to 40 seconds, and part 2 from 1:59 down to 1:19, so near exactly 2 minutes, vs 3:09, over 1/3 time cut!
I also setup a temporary table (and old shelf :) ) with some stops clamped on, so once the first part was lined up and done right in both halves, the alignment procedure for the remaining parts was basically gone, so the 35 seconds of turnaround and switch out got whittled down to around 10 seconds..
So by tweaking the laser settings a bit and using table stops to cut down setup time, instead of 3 hours 7 minutes to finish, with a few tweaks I got it down to roughly 1 hour 35 minutes... almost half! And the engraving quality is identical to the slower way.
Not only did this nearly double my hourly pay, it also left me free to work on other jobs an hour and a half sooner, double bonus! :D
Part 1 of the logo was taking 1:10 to engrave, and part 2 took 1:59, so 3:09 plus 'the turn' plus in & out. I've been using a piece of scrap Rowmark engraved with the outline of the logo, to place on the part and redlight its engraving for placement. Part 1 involved redlighting half the logo, part 2 I just redlighted one letter to get the spacing right. So 3:09 plus about 15 seconds for the turn, plus maybe 20 seconds to re-align the next part and start, so basically 3 minutes 45 seconds per piece. For what it is and what I'm charging, that's fine for 10 pieces.
So the other day I get 50 of these things. 50 x 3.75 minutes = 187 minutes, so about 3 hours 7 minutes to run 50 of these things...
What I did: the quality hatch must fully sweep objects, including dead air space, which can eat lots of time. In the logo where the shape connected to 2 letters, I found a spot to cut it apart and make it 2 pieces. Sweeping the 2 halves, because of their overall shapes, went a LOT faster. I also took hatch angle of the cleanup pass into consideration, running a 90 angle meant less overlapped segments to sweep, which saved more time. So once the hatch routine seemed optimized, I then increased the hatch spacing to .06mm for all 3 hatches, and increased the speed from 1500 to 2000.
The end result was I cut part 1 from 1:10 down to 40 seconds, and part 2 from 1:59 down to 1:19, so near exactly 2 minutes, vs 3:09, over 1/3 time cut!
I also setup a temporary table (and old shelf :) ) with some stops clamped on, so once the first part was lined up and done right in both halves, the alignment procedure for the remaining parts was basically gone, so the 35 seconds of turnaround and switch out got whittled down to around 10 seconds..
So by tweaking the laser settings a bit and using table stops to cut down setup time, instead of 3 hours 7 minutes to finish, with a few tweaks I got it down to roughly 1 hour 35 minutes... almost half! And the engraving quality is identical to the slower way.
Not only did this nearly double my hourly pay, it also left me free to work on other jobs an hour and a half sooner, double bonus! :D