OK let’s assume you actually need this, why not take advantage of the vary power system to get the power levels you need and then you only need to have one operation per speed?
You could make a single stepped gradient for each speed and set vary power at 100 (or full but that’s problematic for recreating what number it means) power setting, and you’re golden.
Just use the hex codes to precisely get your blocks of color, given that vary power uses the greyscale value. Remember, a hex code for a true grey is equal parts R G and B, [e.g. #111111, #222222 or #A1A1A1] so you can extrapolate the power # in a true grey to be (any channel)/255*100.
So, 10% power (decimal 25.5, rounded down to 25 and converted to hex as 19) ought to be #191919,
20% (decimal 51, converted to hex 33) ought to be #333333, and so forth. Make that gradient and copy it… 10? 20? times and set speeds accordingly.
Anyway, it’s theoretical, but I think it ought to work.
Sure, I get that, but any changes they make are not going to be tested against a use case like this, regardless of whether it worked in the past.
I can relate to what you’re trying to do, but having started down that path myself previously, I quickly came to the conclusion it wasn’t going to be of much benefit over other test methods that have been shared here many times before. A handful of tests allow you to quickly narrow down settings that work well.
Potential. I have thought about that as an approach. But the whole point of testing is to know what settings will result in the desired outcome for future products. Vary power may not give me enough of a span at a specific power to say “Yeah, that is the color/depth I want for this project” and I would also have to guess at the actual power by measuring distances out.
I am hopeful that if I go with Vary Power I am able to get multiple gradients in a single file to run them at a multiple speeds. But it seems likely that is a sticking point, and I need to test at a LOT of different speeds.
There is more variability across a single piece of the same material (let alone different sheets) than settings you would need to test. You choose a working range, usually no more than 100 difference in speeds, and a couple of points in-between. Then narrow it down one or two more iterations.
Just make a standard image with however many grades (essentially blocks of greys… 10? 20? however many you want to do) you want and then label them with hershey text scores. Make a grid and place that text at the top as a guide… then you just read down.
I will say though that you are splitting some mighty fine hairs and that this sort of power grid is usually not super necessary. Maybe your needs are different here but there’s a reason why most of us don’t get this detailed on the settings, there’s a cost/benefit curve to this kind of analysis and what you’re describing is usually on the wrong side of it.
People have posted highly detailed grid tests like this before, hunt around, it’s out there. I feel like maybe @rbtdanforth went down this particular rabbit hole once?
In fact all you need is the most extreme depth with vary power. White will not leave a mark and black will go that extreme depth. The gradient will go to everything in between. Even engraving top to bottom of the total half inch range I would defy you to define two different shades next to each (123vs124) I have tried to work with images with not enough shades available and even if you use the contrast you get the “rice terraces” effect as shades are 30 or 40 numbers apart but in practice you adjust the contrast to be at each extreme without to many levels at at either black or white. If you can see the details they will show up.
If you want to get good master files you can make one set for each material like this one…
Then with a max of two or three materials representing a range of basswood to walnut all 3/8 thick do a range of speeds from 4000 to 1000 with a few LPI from 1355 to 340 full power and single depth and perhaps the same with the dithered choice.
From such a set you could easily windage the ideal settings for just about anything.
I appreciate people trying to help. I REALLY do. But I do not appreciate people telling me to bugger off and that what I want is wrong. I work in physics. I do lots of VERY strange things. For many use cases, you are likely quite right. But I am often doing things well outside the normal.
If you have comments helpful about doing something I am trying to do, I would love to hear them. But please stop telling me to just not bother. I could do the not bother without coming to the forums. I am here to figure out if anybody else has noticed issues loading things which previously could load, and if they figured out a way to deal with it.
I am not saying “please don’t answer me if you aren’t Glowforge staff” like so many people do in here. I posted instead of emailing because I do want community input. But what you have posted repeatedly doesn’t read out any assistance, just “stop doing that”
Anyway…
I took the suggestion of trying out Vary power, and the results I got are showing further issues.
This is a shot of the full sample I ran. I am not so great at approximating distances or something, because the numbers are the speeds I ran, and I tried to space them out when it stopped showing visible differences in the engrave, but I had a LOAD of extra space at the end. There should be 22 different areas, that is how many equal size gradient bars I placed in my file. But when I entered settings, it only gave me 19 fields to enter speeds for. In the interface whenever I selected one setting it highlighted an equal size bar, and I organized them to be in proper order from top to bottom of the piece.
However, the extra space here does show possibly room for 3 more total bars worth of power.
Pushing just barely above “normal” speeds I can still see distinction between the output. I do expect on baltic birch plywood to stop seeing clear differences, even though I increased the speed jump per line.
Approaching 3000 speed I stop being clear on where there is a change in speed. But I would expect 4000 speed to have almost zero marking capability even at full power.
And here at the end because of the mystery 3 bars I never gave settings for, who knows what I am actually looking at. But there is no difference from 3000 to 4000. That may be true for Baltic Birch as a whole, but there is the issue I cannot put in a picture…
While this was running I noticed the lack of change back around 3,000. I watched the laser and it was moving well beyond the engraving range to slow down and speed up. But when I timed the laser head moving back and forth, there was no difference in the time to do 5 passes back and forth between what I assumed should be the 3300 and the 4000 speed lines (I hadn’t yet realized that I have 3 “bonus” lines somewhere)
I ran a new test on paper, doing only 3,000 and 4,000 speeds. Once again I timed the head, starting as it began to move left, and counting until it came back 10 times. At 3,000 speed this took 25.21 seconds, and at 4,000 speed 26.06 seconds.
I will assume I lost count in there, if the 3,000 speed had only done 9 return trips, then the time should have been 28,01 seconds instead.
Fortunately this does show a clear difference in results from 4,000 and 3,000 power. So I was incorrect in my belief about what would happen with BB Ply at the upper speeds.
I may be able to make this work by placing discrete color rectangles and saving them as PNG like I had to do for the gradients to work.
On woods and the like where you are removing material this will be true. But titanium and other such materials can behave very oddly at different speed/power combinations:
Figuring out from that test grid what you get for 68 power and 75 speed would be a complete guess.
It is certainly the case that a few materials have temperatures that cause special chemical reactions that there would be many special conditions as how much heating it would cause, Titanium and Niobium go through special color phases at specific temps but it would be temperature and chemical reaction rather than engraving, Similarly when marble id heated beyond a certain point it breaks down to Ca O and CO2 that then react with moisture in the air but again it is the heating and chemical action with the air. but those are specific special cases not connected to the normal use of the laser.
Honestly I am always kind of suspicious about what is going on behind the scenes. The company tries to save us from knowing too much, but I think they go much too far in this effort.
Your processing observation is interesting and I hope you can resolve the issue to your satisfaction.
No luck on that one. Neither opening what was already uploaded nor trying a fresh upload of the originally uploaded file on the original computer and network which had uploaded it.
I found this thread because my usual engrave test pattern (which I found on this forum some time ago) has been loading for minutes now. I can’t remember ever waiting more than 10s or so at “Rendering” with this file It’s 111 steps (10-100+Full power at 100-1000 speed, plus a legend).
There has definitely been a performance regression in the back-end. And I don’t see any announcements of new features that would justify such a huge perf hit.
I’m sorry you ran into trouble when trying to upload and use your file. We took a look at your recent logs, and it looks as though the files are uploading correctly, but then an issue occurs when the files are being processed. When a file contains a high number of steps, or contains a very complex design, this can sometimes cause the file to process unreliably or fail to be processed.
Thank you for the information that you already tried separating your file into a series of files with fewer steps. Something you could try for now would be to separate your tests into files with even fewer groups of steps, and then see if you can load and print them successfully.
Since the goal of your project is to develop manual settings as well as settings for materials that were purchased from another company, we won’t be able to offer support for prints that don’t come out as expected. Materials may vary widely from piece to piece, even if they’re created by the same manufacturer.
I’m going to share the information with our team that some folks are seeing slower performance on their designs which contain a high number of steps so that they can investigate.
We all understand the Proofgrade rule but I want to point out that the current support restrictions are vexing for your advanced users, and also confusing when you consider your marketing messaging.
If a problem cannot be replicated on Proofgrade with Proofgrade settings, it officially doesn’t exist, and cannot be supported. So that means that people working with paper or any other material for which there is not a Proofgrade analog… or even manual settings on Proofgrade… can’t get help for what may be very real technical problems.
For example, recently on these forums, someone had problems with what looked like irregular power delivery that manifested only at very low power settings. Well, there is no Proofgrade analog for that problem, so there was no help available.
Yet, in the official marketing materials, we’re shown the cool stuff we can do on unsupported materials. The first thing you see on the video on glowforge.com is working with cardboard.
Yet, if someone had a problem with their cardboard project, you’d tell them to go fish.
To be totally fair and transparent, every time your marketing materials show non-Proofgrade, there should be fine print explaining that this is an unsupported use and if it doesn’t work out for you, there is no support available.
What would be even better is to make a good faith effort to tackle more problems. You don’t have to help us develop settings for engraving crazy materials, but if someone demonstrates a software problem like @jacobturner did , it doesn’t matter what the material is. That’s a problem with the product that should be addressed.
@jacobturner, thank you for your patience while we looked into this. We have a work-around which might help you with your print while we continue to investigate. Will you please try clearing your browser’s cache and cookies and then let us know if you’re able to load and print your test design?
I’m really busy with the start of a new semester at work and some home repair concerns at home. So I may be slow on getting back to this post with updates.
Is there a preferred browser which I should be using when I try uploading now? And is the cache clearing the workaround, or has something been changed in how files process? Because I have tried with a cleared cache in the initial testing.
Attempting an upload of the large main file right now in Firefox with a Private window (no others opened previously, so clear cache and no cookies).
Took about 45 seconds to clear the initial GFUI screen and show me the “rendering your design” grey interface. Somewhere around 1 minute 30 seconds firefox gave me a notice that the web page is slow and asks if I want to close it (this message would flash on and off in the later stages of earlier attempts)
13 minutes and 30 seconds, still rendering. The notice that the webpage is slowing my computer down is popping in and out.
26 minutes in now and I need to head out. Will attempt loading the 7 smaller file parts later to see if there was improvement for that one.
