Raster vs Vector engraving

Good practice keeping your settings in a book…I do too…so many materials to remember in just your head…lol. Plus with two different lasers…I have different settings…will be 3 when I get the Glowforge…

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I’m new to the laser world. What kinds of things do you (@jamesdhatch & @smcgathyfay) record in your notebooks? I’m guessing date, project, material, speed, power. Anything else?

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Not so much the date…
Material, thickness power, speed…
I also have kerf size for each material…

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Thanks for this information! I’m sure knowing what to track will make dialing in the GF that much easier.

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do you find you need calipers or other precision equipment to measure the kerf?

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There is a crowd /grin

Depends on the cut most calipers outside measure wont sit inside of a kerf line. But you have a few options

Cut a 1x1 set the cut to the out side measure the block should be 1x1 then measure the void it will be say 1.0016. So subtract the 1 and dived the difference by 2 and that’s your kerf
Or you set the cut to the inside of the box line and basically do the same for the measure

But yes you would use a caliper, and it doesn’t have to be a full inch by inch it can be as small as what ever it takes to get the outside measure forks to fit so it could be .25x.75. Will depend on your tool

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Absolutely. The measurements are so small that you need precise instruments. A hairline difference can mean no glue/tight fit or loose fit having to glue parts together…

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In addition to your list I also keep track of other stuff.

I do date mine. I want to see how power required is changing over time to give me a heads up on tube life (I know you have those cool metal ones that last for year but mine’s a cheap chinese one :slight_smile:).

I also include material source - helps me figure out if I’m having issues with a place I’m buying stuff from.

I also note if I have any issues with the cut - like it worked 95% on a cut but had a couple of issues with the cut failing due to knots, internal glues or something materials based or a machine problem or design file issue.

Filename of the AI or Corel design file. I try to keep these in different directories by project, but this helps me distinguish between versions of a project design as I tweak it over time.

And runtime. I like to know how long I’m going to have to babysit it if I go back to run something again.

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Material source is a good one…as are they all…
Cant go wrong with TMI (“too much information” for anyone who doesnt know)…unless its the TMI we all dont want to hear about…lmao :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
My laser can do a run time prediction from the file so dont have to record that luckily…and I have a 3T hard drive with lots and lots of files…lol

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One of mine does but it’s not very accurate which causes some amount of friction with my wife because how long I think I’ll be occupied is different than what I end up being diverted :slight_smile: I’ve learned not to start something before dinner :grin:

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derail but 3T I have 50TB running at home… never mind what I get to play with at work witch is simply massive :slight_smile:

Oops meant to say 3Tb worth of files…my drives are 15TB

Way to spark the envy y’all. I thought I was the big man in town last year when I got a LAN box with 10TB to share.

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That’s very impressive how is that all put together.
I have personally
4x4tb
4x3tb
6x2tb
2x5tb
6x128gb ssd
2x256gb ssd
1x512gb ssd

Being ran on server 2012r2 in various configuration for performance tiers or resilience

For you to have 150tb that is a huge amount of space to hate personally spinning

At work well we measure our space in the PB. Of the space on control its about 600TB but with dedupication we can fit about 400TB in 50TB of physical disk

Sorry typo…15TB. I need to proofread my typing!!!
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I have 3 external hard drives…not always hooked up to the computer…some incase of fire or disaster so I can grab and go so to speak

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Thanks for this information! That’s what I was thinking about recording date. From what I have heard, we can expect the GF tube performance to degrade over time so tracking this could be helpful.

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wonder if there is a way to do mileage on the tube via the cloud something like photons pumped or total tube wattage used total @dan ? Useing something like that vs time because 10 min at 20% is different then 10min at 100%

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“In the hopper”

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eh only kinda sorta time is not actually the metric to measure usage for something like this. You have two rice silos with the same quantity you open one silo to a 2 inch circle you open the other to a 3 inch circle and let the rice flow out. The first 3 inch silo drains in an hour the 2 inch in 4 hours. What you need to do instead is to count the grains of rice that have left the silo. And then against what your know quantity is you will know when the silo needs a refil… As this is a new laser tube custom we don’t know how many grains of rice it has but at least we can track the grains out or in this case photons out or watts used directly by the tube. And then the gf cloud data can start doing predictive modeling cross checked with service tickets. time is not a good measure