Constant engraving

So…I’m engraving acrylic ornaments. I figured out, by doing one, that it will take 9 hrs to complete all the ornaments. How long can I consistently use my glow forge before it needs a break? How long does the break need to be?

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If it needs a break, it will take one. You will get a message that says “cooling down”. How often that happens depends on the ambient temperature and humidity and the air flow through the GF. It happened to me frequently when I was using the air filter, but it has not happened at all since I had a 6"hole drilled through me foundation so I could vent outside using an external in-line fan.

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I’ve run my machine for 12 hrs, but you need to be keen on monitoring it, a lot of fires are acrylic related.

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It sounds like you’re engraving multiple pieces, whether that’s copies of the same design or separate ones - vs. combining to a single large graphic.

See if this helps.

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Thanks for the info. One of these days I will get inkscape because that seems to be a well liked program for projects on the glow forge. Right now I can only line up the images as close as I can get them, and I can’t group them together. I need a new computer,not my chromebook, before that happens. …Maybe I will buy one with the money I’m making on these ornaments. :grin::+1:t2:

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Mess with your settings too. The current PG SD engrave settings for vector artwork (545/70/270) take a lot longer than the old PG SD engrave settings (1000/full/270) while producing near-identical results. If you have bitmap artwork, you can even go faster than 1000 speed.

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Aha! That’s a very good point! I keep forgetting they crippled the default engraving settings! That makes everything take twice as long.

I have the original ones as a “custom” setting.

I find that reducing LPI in acrylic especially leaves a “grain” between each path which is ok if you want that effect. You can increase the LPI and even set your focus high so each path is not as sharp. Increasing you speed a lot will only be a time saver if the engraved area is very wide as the time taken to turn around can be more than the time actually engraving.

It is better to compare engraving to 3D printing times as the hundreds of times back and forth in both takes a lot longer than a cutout around the same area.

In Inkscape you can align many images and use Make Bitmap Copy (Alt +B) to create an entire page in one image. And then you can hide the originals so they will not come into the GFUI when you load it. That way It will engrave everything at once.

There is a way to install Inkscape on Chromebooks through the Linux terminal on the Chromebook.

It can “technically” be done but it’s far from stable.

Chrome has many “unique” features that vary from standard Linux distributions.

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I’ve done a few 14.5 hour engraves, but I’ve done a TON of 6+ hour engraves back to back to back, with ~10 minute breaks in between to clean.

Here’s 8 of the 80 tiles required for the table I’m working on that’s running right now. 6.5 hour engraves, currently 26 hours into 65 hours of (almost) continuous engraving and I think this is the ~15th time I’ve done this. Ceramic IS a little bit cleaner and a whole lot less concerning than flammable materials, though.

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