help speeding up print jog

[Kevin Fife]

does anyone know a way to speed up this print job. Right now it is taking about 25 min per and I still have 6 to go. Speed 20 Power 100. They wont the letters nice and deep.

[Kevin Fife]

Sorry forgot to mention. The laser is a Legend 32EX 40 watt

[Shaddy Dedmore]

Well, you could do 2 side by side if you get the measurements just right.

Otherwise, I don't know any tricks to speed up and get the same depth.

Shaddy

[Kevin Huffman]

Hey Kevin,
From what I could see if it goes line by line it is going as fast as possible.

If your driver has an option like our GCC's Lasers do, called cluster.
You would be able to skip the area between the two emblems at the top but that just saves 1 minture to 2. It would engrave the first image, then the second one, skipping all the area in between.

Another thing you can try is up your DPI and speed. DPI (Lines per inch) will put more lines in there which means there is more heat. If you have more heat then you should be able to speed it up to 30-40% speed and achieve the same depth. Something you may want to try.

Other than that it is pretty compact and doesn't have a ton of space betweem images.

[Kevin Fife]

I was thanking of that but I dont have any extra placks, and there is know time left for error ( not my fault thay just got me the names today and they are need for tomorrow). I have only been making and engraving plackes for about 5 months now and still dont know all the ends and outs of the laser. Just hoping that I missed somthing when reading the book, and one of you could fill me in. Thanks..

[Joe Pelonio]

Hey Kevin,
Another thing you can try is up your DPI and speed. DPI (Lines per inch) will put more lines in there which means there is more heat. If you have more heat then you should be able to speed it up to 30-40% speed and achieve the same depth. Something you may want to try.

That's correct, especially on wood the higher dpi goes deeper even at higher speed. Also, your jet bitmap is going to take longer than if it were
cleaner. Though it probably looks fine on the plaques it does have some pixelation and grayscale that will take longer and not go as deep as the lettering. Not worth the time to fix that for the tradeoff in speed on this job though.

[Kevin Fife]

ok the one in the laser right now is almost halfway done, DPI for it was 600 x 600 Ill bump it up to 1200 x 1200 and set the speed to 40 and see how that works. Joe the jet does look ok. But your right it is a little pixelated. The jet was from another plack and on it it is much smaller so you dont notice to pixelation. Thank all of you for your help so far.

[Joe Pelonio]

There are no guarantees in life (or laser settings) so if I were you I'd run a line or two of it on a scrap first!

[Alan Young]

Hey Kevin,
If your driver has an option like our GCC's Lasers do, called cluster.


Does the Gcc Mecury driver have this cluster option? I don't recall seeing one.

Alan

[Kevin Fife]

The 1200 x 1200 speed 40 didnt work but the 1200 x 1200 speed 30 did.
I know its not that big of a speed increase but when your sift was up a 4:00 and your still at work looking at a stack of placks every min counts. Thanks again for all yalls help.

[Pat Kearney]

I have had the same issue, however when possible I have been converting certain items to vector (at low power and higher speeds of course). For example both of the emblems on your plaque I would just change to hairline and set vector settings on my 35W Epilog Helix to a setting of Speed 80-100/Power 10-20 depending on the material you are engraving. I have found this to speed up some jobs substantially as it does not have to travel between unlasered areas, it just follows the lines of the individual item. If you could find a good enough image of the fighter you could possibly do the same as it pretty much consists of lines as well. It will definitely speed things up for you but I am unsure if it would produce a line thick enough for you requirements. It may not work for every job but it has helped save time on many of mine. I have done this on many occassions as well for designs on wood which are too thick for the laser and need to be cut on bandsaw after. Instead of tracing around a template onto the wood I just place the piece in the laser, vector it out (or in many cases several pieces for duplicates), and then use this as my guide when cutting and sanding. Great results!

Of course with regard to the lettering you are pretty much stuck to rastering.

Hope this helps.

PAT

[Roy Brewer]

does anyone know a way to speed up this print job. Right now it is taking about 25 min per and I still have 6 to go. Speed 20 Power 100. They wont the letters nice and deep.

Kevin,

I may have a few suggestions based on how you are implementing the job. That is, Epilog tech support always recommends letting the job completely download before actually starting. If you are doing that, then you are wasting a lot of time because you have your piece size set to your table size and your print driver has to calculate all that empty space.

I know it is a heated discussion on this forum ( and others), as to the pros and cons of this approach. If I can't talk you into making your page size match your piece (12x15) instead of your table (32x20), then I want to be sure you understand how to put your Legend *on line* before printing the job, so that the 1st bit of data starts engraving when it reaches the Legend rather than waiting for a complete download.

Especially with the Page size set to the Table size of your large system, you should have at least 528K RAM and preferably 1 gig.

As always, listen to all suggestions (even if they are contradictory) and then see which works for you. But, I'd suggest going the other way. Cut your DPI to 400 on wood and ileave speed power where they are. If you notice any difference at all, then cut your back about 3%.

While it I don't think it would have anything to do with production, I'm curious why you are using embeddings on the plane and the arc(?).

[Kevin Huffman]

Does the Gcc Mecury driver have this cluster option? I don't recall seeing one.

Alan
Yes, it does. It is located on the Advance tab inside the driver. It is in the Mercury, Explorer, Neptune and Venus drivers.