I have not seen any increase in my engrave projects speeding up since the upgrade. Is that because I need to change the settings I was using? My cutting boards always engrave at 1000/100/225. They come out great. But there has been no change in the amount of time. I thought with the upgrade my 60 minute engrave would engrave faster? I do pay for premium.
4 Likes
How much it improves will depend a bit on the project design, your settings/material, and which model Glowforge you have.
That said if it is a 60 min engrave I’d expect at least a bit of an improvement. If you can post a screenshot and talk about your settings (the specific numbers, not “draft medium maple plywood”)
5 Likes
using the same svg file to engrave on a cutting board from HL. Before the upgrade it took 60 minutes. It still takes 60 minutes after the upgrade. So I’m wondering do I need to change settings? I used 1000/100/225. I have the GF Plus.
3 Likes
Can you upload a pic of your design?
As for speed increases you would expect to see more improvement at higher speeds (this applies to you, 1000 is pretty quick)
The plus should see some increase because the performance models are affected more by the change. (Also applies to you, this is good)
The layout and types of objects you’re engraving will impact it as well. Raster vs vector in particular. I’d have to see a screenshot or the svg itself to be sure.
That said I’d expect at least a small improvement at this point. Might be worth talking to support, mane somehow you didn’t get the acceleration improvement?
5 Likes
Which upgrade are you speaking of? I thought that a speed of 1000 was a constant - the head would move at the same speed after the upgrade as it did before the upgrade. What changed, was that the maximum speeds available increased. The only way to decrease the time it takes to engrave something would be to use the higher speeds. Higher speed, however, does not necessarily result in a faster engrave as the faster the speed, the more room necessary for the printhead to stop, reverse course and resume speed on every line of the engrave. Faster engrave speeds could actually take longer than your current settings.
6 Likes
I’m assuming that we’re talking about this upgrade.
You should see overall engrave times go down pretty much across the board with greater gains happening where you have a taller, narrower engrave area. That said wider and shorter will still be preferable but you won’t see as much improvement on those.
@stearnsdebbie you will probably want to read that entire announcement, but this will be especially relevant for any conversations you might have with support:
If you have a teal icon and saw no change to job speed or if your icon is still black I’d call support and ask about it.
4 Likes
I bought the file from etsy so I’m not sure legally if I can upload it. I’m pretty sure I got the upgrade because prior the max engrave setting on speed was 1000 - I now have the option of going up to 2000. That’s what I’m wondering if I need to change settings. I’ve ran test but can’t seem to find a sweet spot where the engrave time will go down. It was boasted that with this upgrade our time would be reduced. I thought that was on the GF end and not on my end by tweaking settings. I see so many forums where to engrave most use 1000/100/225 for standard svg files to engrave. It works great. My hope was a reduced time so that gives me less hours on the GF making it last longer.
3 Likes
Yup, you have it right. I’d talk to support. You should have seen some sort of improvement on engrave jobs.
3 Likes
I think the size of the project may dampen any time improvement. If there isn’t enough room to get up to speed or where Dan’s “go faster faster” can tangibly impact the acceleration to be apparent even with the changes the overall 60 minutes might be 58 minutes or almost not discernable.
3 Likes
I think this logic doesn’t hold up in this case. The OP isn’t changing the speed, it’s still 1000, and the acceleration is improved, so it needs less room and time per row.
Yeah it will depend a lot on the overall shape of the engraved area. If it takes an hour at 1000 speed it’s a pretty large area, probably somewhere in the range of 60 square inches at least. If it’s 19” wide and 3 tall it’ll be the least improvement… if it’s 6” wide and 10 tall it’ll be a bit more time savings. If it’s a bunch of separate rasters then you should see the largest improvement because of the sheer number of lines it’ll be doing (since they’re engraved one at a time). [That said, if you’re doing this you should combine your rasters, it’s a huge time saver.]
I’d expect some improvement for most use cases here, more than the 2 minute range you’re describing, but it’s complex enough that I can’t say for sure.
4 Likes
This update was announced 2 years ago. I am guessing that support personnel have changed since then and may not have much knowledge of before/after performance. It doesn’t hurt to contact them, however.
5 Likes
thankyou.
1 Like
I’ve found this to be the biggest time saver. 3 separate items in a row, stacked 2 high at ten minutes each(60 min), or 3 at a time horizontally, 2 rows high(~24 min a row)
The amount of distance covered horizontally across the entire bed once isn’t nearly as costly as repeating the same horizontal lines three separate times.
4 Likes
How does one combine rasters? Do I need certain software to do that or can the GF do that for me?
Someone replied to your post.
| wesleyjames Regular
May 19 |
- | - |
evansd2:
[That said, if you’re doing this you should combine your rasters, it’s a huge time saver.]
I’ve found this to be the biggest time saver. 3 separate items in a row, stacked 2 high at ten minutes each(60 min), or 3 at a time horizontally, 2 rows high(~24 min a row)
The amount of distance covered horizontally across the entire bed once isn’t nearly as costly as repeating the same horizontal lines three separate times.
2 Likes
So an svg can contain embedded rasters (jpeg, png etc). Essentially you use your vector editor to combine them into a single raster after you’ve laid it all out. How exactly you do that depends on which editor you’re using. I use inkscape, and the method there is to use the “make a bitmap copy” function.
Here’s how that goes.
Start with a laid out array of bitmaps with blue cutlines surrounding them:
This isn’t ideal, each of the two images will engrave separately and take a while.
While they’re both selected (and only the rasters, do not select the vector blue circles. you choose Edit→Make a bitmap copy. This combines them into one larger raster (bitmap):
If you look closely you’ll see that the white background of the rasters covers up your circle, no big deal. You can fix that by moving the images back underneath your vector blue lines.
The trick here is that this made a copy. If I move the new combined raster you’ll see the originals underneath:
You can either remove the originals by carefully moving and repositioning things or you can ignore them in the GF user interface.
That’s all there is to it using Inkscape.
However. If you are using inkscape it’s important to understand what DPI you want in your bitmap copies. That’s in preferences:
I prefer 300dpi for most things, 600 in extreme cases (engraving super fine details on anodized aluminum for example). A good way to think of it is that 300 dpi is about what a paper laser printer outputs. In general it yields a good result.
In inkscape I believe the default resolution for make a bitmap copy is 96. You won’t be happy with that, you’ll notice “jaggy” edges. Set your DPIs like I have them in that screenshot, I think you’ll be pleased.
6 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.