2 plaques 1 at a time

[Brian Robison]

Hi all,
It seems like I've seen this before so I apologize if it's redundant. I'm running 2 plaques side by side but I'd like to run plaque 1 first and plaque 2 second. Where do I find the tips on doing this?

Thanks,
Brian

[Scott Shepherd]

Hi Brian, I can only give you the hack version and I don't know the "proper" way of doing it.

Two ways I know of, both might be the long way around, so someone please correct me if there's an easier way.

1) Move the second plaque to a second layer, then click on the little printer icon next to that layer and it'll turn off printing for that layer. Run the first one, then turn off the printing icon on the first layer and turn it on for the second layer, and send it to the printer again.

2) Create the first plaque on Page 1, and the second plaque (in the right place) on Page 2. Send it to the printer and it'll send two programs. One is the first plaque, and the other is the second.

[Brian Robison]

I'll try that second way. Will it run both by sending it to the laser once? MAN what a time saver it would be!

[Scott Shepherd]

It's supposed to. It should send two jobs over. For instance, if your job name is Jones.cdr, then it'll send two jobs over :

Job 1- Jones.cdr
Job 2- Page2.cdr

Just make note, the last job sent (Page2) will be the one that runs if you hit the start button (make sure you select Job 1 if you want it to run first).

You can set it up that way and then look at the print preview of it to see it all. Just look at Page 1, Page 2, etc. in the preview.

[Rodne Gold]

Make each plaque a different colour , like the first one black and the 2nd to the next colour your laser engraves , lets say red (your engraver will always do colours in a specific order) and set both colours to your normal engraving settings.
In a single pass it will do plaque 1 and then plaque 2.
I have a setting on my laser called cluster and it allows me to force something to be engraved as a single entity and then move on to the next based on the white space betwen them.
For example a row of squares would normally engrave by making the laser head scan the row end to end , if I use cluster , the engraver will go square by square. You might have this in stamp mode on yours and could use this too.

[Mike Null]

I'm a little curious as to why you want to do that. Plaques are rarely exactly the same size so precise set up could be a problem.

[Brian Robison]

Rodne, I'll give that a shot. Is it in the laser driver?

Mike, the plaques are the same size. The laser will
probably run them 3 or 4 times faster this way. It won't have to traverse from one plaque to the next over an empty area at slow speed.

[Wil Lambert]

Rodne, I'll give that a shot. Is it in the laser driver?

Mike, the plaques are the same size. The laser will
probably run them 3 or 4 times faster this way. It won't have to traverse from one plaque to the next over an empty area at slow speed.

Brian,

You may want to do a few tests on this. I thought the same and it was actually faster to allow the machine to raster longer distances than a lot of little stops and starts. The machine has a ramp/ overshoot on every pass to make sure th laser is up to speed before it fires. So the more stops and start the more wasted travel. I don't know if this is true with your machine but it is the case for mine.

Example: Part takes 3min 10sec to make. Setup 24 in machine now takes 2min 48sec for each part. It was a significant difference for us.

Wil

[Gary Hair]

Brian,

You may want to do a few tests on this. I thought the same and it was actually faster to allow the machine to raster longer distances than a lot of little stops and starts. The machine has a ramp/ overshoot on every pass to make sure th laser is up to speed before it fires. So the more stops and start the more wasted travel. I don't know if this is true with your machine but it is the case for mine.

Example: Part takes 3min 10sec to make. Setup 24 in machine now takes 2min 48sec for each part. It was a significant difference for us.

Wil

What I have found is that if there is a small area on each plaque to be engraved AND slow speed then it will take longer to do multiple plaques at once. If I am engraving something mostly edge to edge, and high speed, then it takes significantly less time to do them in one pass.

For example. I had 36, 7x9 plaques to engrave with a logo that was approx 2.5" wide. It took just over one minute to do each plaque individually. When I put 3 of them across it actually took 4:30.
On the other hand, I engrave lots of aluminum dog tags. A single tag takes about 35 seconds and if I do 16 it only takes about 7 seconds per tag.

So, it really depends on what you are engraving, what speed and how much coverage.

Gary

[Brian Robison]

Thanks Gary,
You put that better than I could have.

I think I need to update my drivers. I haven't done that since the Mini was new. I'll do that tonight and see how that works.

[Brian Robison]

Alrighty then,
Updated my drivers and such.
I did some plaques and to my horror the gray scale area on a logo engraved at 100% just like the black area!
I wish I had been warned of this.
Now I leave the color mapping off.

[Mike Null]

Did you check all the options in your driver to be sure you had selected the right one?

You may need to be in clipart or photo.

[Brian Robison]

It was in clipart. As soon as I went back to the old way it worked fine. Frustrating, I lost several hours of work and quite a bit of product.

[Bill Cunningham]

I have gotten into the habit of running 'everything' that has a greyscale, through photograv, and I rarely count on the driver halftone for accurate reproduction anymore.. I paid the bucks for photograv, might as well use it, and it does do a much better job than the halftone in the driver.. Surprises cost too much!

[Roy Brewer]

I did some plaques and to my horror the gray scale area on a logo engraved at 100% just like the black area!
Brian,

Now that we know there is a grayscale(bitmap?) image involved, I don't think Rodney's "columnizing" tip will work for your application, since I can't think of a way to easily "color" a grayscale bitmap.
If we can't set the image to a simple RGB value then the "columnizing" won't work and if we leave as grayscale then both plaques will be traversed (defeating your objective) and grayscale is really just a shade of black --- makes sense that it would engrave in the speed/power settings of black.

Mike Null: did you try this? Does it work differently in your driver?

[Mike Null]

Roy:

I'll have to defer an answer until I have time to do a little experimenting.