Objects Printing Out of Order on Epilog Laser

[Barry Basiliere]

**** I moved this thread to the Laser and CNC forum ******

This started happening today. The last time I ran a specific job on my laser it vectored in the order that I specified in my print job. I am using Corel X3, I have an Epilog Helix 60 Watt laser. I am running off from a Dell computer with 20gb free disk and 2 gb of memory.

When I ran the job last week all went well, today the print job is vectoring in order of the start node for each cut shape. It is a detailed job with 72 cut lines so going out of order has added 30 seconds to the job. It doesn't sound like much but I have over 300 of these to run so it is adding 2 1/2 hours to my total run time.

I have contacted Epilog and am waiting a return call from them but I don't expect them to be much help. I have updated my printer drivers from their web site and that did not help. I have booted my computer, restarted the laser and re-created the entire print job. Nothing seems to help.

If anyone has any insight or has experienced this problem and figured out a solution I would love to hear from you.

Barry

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[Dave Jones]

There is a setting in the Epilog driver for vector sorting. Has that setting changed since the last time this worked correctly? If you haven't changed the order of the items in Corel's object manager, then that's the only other thing that comes to mind.

[Barry Basiliere]

Dave,

Thank you for the quick reply. I had checked the vector sort and it was on. It is only supposed to effect when the outer vectors are cut so that inner cuts are made first. I turned it off just in case and I checked the order of cuts in the object manager. The order in the object manager is correct but the cuts are made out of sequence when the job is run.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure this one out.

[Dave Jones]

The only other thing I can think of is if you have colors defined in the advanced tab and not all vectors are black. Then that defines an additional order to the engraving.

[Barry Basiliere]

Thanks again Dave. All the vector lines are black.

I was hoping that someone has had a similar experience and has found it to be a Microsoft update or something like that. It was working fine and then a couple of weeks later, without any changes to the Corel file or laser, the jobs starts screwing up.

I may end up with no hair by the time this is over.

Barry

[Barry Basiliere]

OK, here is where I am at on this one.

A tech from Epilog Laser came out to my site and tested the laser by connecting his laptop to it and running one of the jobs that I was having trouble with. The laser ran perfectly.

It was determined that the problem lay within my PC and I have requested a list of files that are shared between the Epilog printer drivers and the rest of the system. I will try to determine if one or more of these files is corrupt.

The tech was able to suggest a work around that got me my job speed back. We used color mapping to have the groups cut in order and all was well. While this adds additional steps to color map (not a big deal) it does get the speed back to where it belongs.

[Bill Jermyn]

Any update on this problem? I am having the same issue.

[Barry Basiliere]

Any update on this problem? I am having the same issue.

Bill,

Since I posted this I have a new computer and am running a new operating system. I went from Windows XP Pro to Windows Vista Business and am no longer having problems. I wish I had better news for you but I didn't ever figure out what caused the problem on my old computer.

Barry

[Bill Jermyn]

OK, thanks for the update anyway. It certainly is aggravating when I have a production run to do....