Processing multiple jobs 1 at a time with a trotec laser

[Stuart Petrie]

I often do hundreds of pieces a day on my trotec speedy 300, sometimes items that I do up to 50-60 of at a time. Is there a way besides making each job a different color, to make the laser do each job one after another rather than tracking between them and processing the table from top to bottom. I'm using Coreldraw and Trotec's Jobcontrol software if it matters.

[Jiten Patel]

If I understand you correctly, you want multiple pieces on your bed and want to run different jobs at different times potentially in different positions? If that is correct, then I set-up a jig on my bed, and use markers to position individual jobs. Print individual files as opposed to printing a bed size job and you can pick and choose which one runs. Not sure why you would want to do this as processing time will jump massively.

Something like the image if it helps: we used to sell thousands of tealight holders with different designs and different colours - the combinations were endless, so we had a file with most of the designs saved on there plus the markers which correspond the the jig for that substrate. Once everything is lined up, we can choose which design gets put in a particular position depending on the colour being loaded into the machine and run. We still would track across but if we wanted we can engrave just the 1st and 20th position.

Untitled-2.jpg

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm not fully understanding what you want to do either. You want to run a table full of items, but you want them to run 1 at a time, not the whole table full?

Nice job Jit! Great to see others using JCX features.

[Stuart Petrie]

Capture.PNG
Perhaps I didn't explain very well, a setup like this is relatively common. Is there any way to run all of these jobs, without it tracking back and forth between jobs 0, 1 and 2? As it is it takes like, 4-5 minutes to run those jobs that are 30 seconds each when run on their own. I can just run them one at a time, I was just wondering if there was a way to run them individually without running them one at a time.

[Tony Lenkic]

The advantage in time saving should be to have items positioned to fill the work area horizontally since machine traversing is very quick.
Engraving them individually you loose lot's of time loading and unloading machine.
Have you tried to engrave as per your setup only three on left side and what was elapsed time doing so (90-95 seconds)?

[Kev Williams]

I'm not sure I understand exactly either!

So I'm going to assume- maybe wrongly since I know XXX about job control- that these jobs on this layout are going to be placed in the engraver in the same place?

IF the jobs placed in horizontal rows are fast-engraving jobs, it should faster just to run all three (top row) at once than each job individually--

but IF those jobs are slow to engrave, such as running Cermark for example, then running all the blank space between rows will eat time...

So if possible (depends on what you're engraving), change the engraving color of each COLUMN:
sp1.jpg

if changing color is do-able for your engraving, then jobs in the black column will engrave first, then the blue column, then the green...

[Scott Shepherd]

Kev's got the solution for you. Color map them and then put all the colors in rows. It'll do each row (in theory) and then head to the next row.

Just something to consider (since I don't know the actual job, and it might not be beneficial at all), is to rotate them all 90 degrees. That would let you stack a lot more on the X axis and maybe gain you some of that lost time, but maybe not. That's where the time calculator comes in handy. I'd try it both ways and see if one way cuts off any time over the other.

Good job Kev! You're almost a Job Control Master now

[Rodne Gold]

A lot of drivers will have a "spacing" type of setting , ie if the space between elements is bigger than you set , it will do the element in its entirety and not scan back and forth..check if your Trotec job control has this.. it could be under the stamp section ...

[Gary Hair]

A lot of drivers will have a "spacing" type of setting , ie if the space between elements is bigger than you set , it will do the element in its entirety and not scan back and forth..check if your Trotec job control has this.. it could be under the stamp section ...

I miss that feature from my GCC Explorer! If it exists on the Trotec I don't know where.

[Mike Null]

Doesn't running by color do the same thing?

[Stuart Petrie]

Doesn't running by color do the same thing?

Yeah it does but I'm trying to avoid doing that. The time savings will only be a few minutes per batch tops, so its hardly worth changing my text color every order. I was just hoping there was an easy and simple way.

[Kev Williams]

A lot of drivers will have a "spacing" type of setting , ie if the space between elements is bigger than you set , it will do the element in its entirety and not scan back and forth..check if your Trotec job control has this.. it could be under the stamp section ...

I miss that feature from my GCC Explorer! If it exists on the Trotec I don't know where.

GCC calls it "CLUSTER", and seriously, it is one of THEE best features on this machine-- it's also referred to as a 'white space' adjustment...
cluster.jpg
How it works: the .394" entered (10mm) is the default, it means that any same-colored objects laid horizontally that fall into the same vertical plane, but are spaced more than 10mm apart, will NOT engrave at the same time- but any objects that are spaced LESS than 10mm apart, WILL engrave at the same time--

-- this represents five 1x3" 'things' laid across horizontally, the black row is spaced 3/4" apart, the blue row is spaced 1" apart...
If I set the cluster to 7/8", the black row will be engraved all at once since the 3/4" space falls below the 7/8" threshhold,
and the blue row will engrave each 'thing' one-at-a-time because the 1" space is beyond the threshold...
space.jpg
The neat thing is, it's completely automatic! The machine will compensate for ALL objects of any same job using just one color! The only reason for color changes is when power/speed needs changing...
I usually enter a 1" distance, since usually it's faster to raster items that close together at once. But it depends on the speed you're running, for Cermark I'll use the default 10mm setting, because at Cermark speed engraving all that 10mm air space several times across starts to add up the wasted time...