A key point in saving time that newer people may not realize is the rasterize repetitive images trick and line it all up horizontally.
The first part, 1 by 1, took an hour. Flipped over and did a single rasterized back, only 40 min.
Your video demonstrates how this saves time very well!
I’ll put as many designs as I can fit on a sheet together in Inkscape, select all the engrave areas, and then click “Edit > Make a Bitmap Copy” to turn them into one big image to engrave in one pass like that. I have bitmap copies set to 300 dpi in Inkscape’s preferences.
Converting vector designs to bitmap before engraving has two other cool side effects: you can choose engrave speeds over 1000 (up to 4000 on a GF Pro), and the raster planner is faster than the vector planner, so it takes less time to “prepare your design”.
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Excellent advice. I’ll add a bit to it:
If we’re talking about saving time, then I would have arranged the pieces here differently. Eliminate all the dead space you can, and keep the vertical height as small as possible. With six of these, with an aspect ratio of about 2:1, you would see the best savings if you arrange them horiztonally in two columns, and touching each other.
Consider this: On top you see two possible layouts: yours (roughly) in green, what I’m proposing in red. Then below, you see how they look when overlapped.
All of that green space on the right of the overlapped pieces is “wasted” space. In general, area is a good stand in for engrave time, all other factors being equal. The more compact you can make your design, the better.
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In this case, six is the highest number of these I’ve had for one batch. I have had less. And if I reuse this cardboard jig, this will hold each one with minimal space between.
I’ll be making a jig from wood later. The cardboard is flimsy without the tray in.
Yes, you are correct.
One could probably save an additional 2-3 minutes(my guess) by putting the boxes up against each other.
Edit: Boxes are roughly 3x2x1 inches. I don’t know if the additional savings in horizontal movement would make up for the additional inch of vertical movement if clumped in your horizontal 3x2 row arrangement.
Yeah hard to say. There are gaps also because of the margins, you’d have to try it and see what the ui says. Vertical travel is costly, as is LPI setting, this seems like it’s too close to call by eye.
Anyway, good tip from the start.
Well, for anyone who reads this afterwards, your point is worthy of consideration in the overall planning of item arrangement in the gf bed.
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