Engraving is time consuming as it scans back and forth

[jdcxw]

Not had time to experiment so thought I’d throw this out there. Any way to get GF to engrave as it were a vector file to be cut? Example If I have just a thin line rectangle on a 4 x 6 piece of stock it marks as it scans back & forth till rectangle is created. Time consuming!! … I’d like to see it engrave the lines and text as it would if it were cutting. Dont know it the score feature would accomplish this ?? Still learning the machine… thanks
JW

[evansd2]

Yes that’s what score is, it just traces a single line of the outline of the vector shape.

You can vary the thickness of that line somewhat by intentionally defocusing the score. The more you go out of focus the wider the beam is when it hits the material. I played with this and the traveling salesman problem to yield some interesting results

Traveling salesman problem revisited

Wait, don’t close the door, I’m sure I could interest you in a set of *SLAM!* [IMG_2710] Apologies, but this post is going to be complex, text-heavy and kinda nerdy. You have been warned. So I finally got to the traveling salesman problem. This is a topic that has been covered a few times before, but I had some ideas about how to do it a little differently, and now with clean corners, it seemed like it was about time. The traveling salesman problem is a broad topic, if you have no idea wha…

As for not having the time to experiment, I’d suggest making a bunch of time to rummage through the forum. It’ll pay you back, every hour you spend reading stuff now will save you ten later.

[markevans36301]

Don't be afraid of the score

As much as we love engraving, don’t be afraid to try score for line art, sometimes it is the best. [20170908_235441]

Scoring is not for everything but yes, it is a great time saver and has a unique look.

[jdcxw]

Cool. Thanks I have a big order of aluminum equipment tags for machinery so not wanting to change processes at this point. Will give that a try. Takes almost a half hour to put some text and a logo on a 5x10 blank.

“Simple is better…”

[brokendrum]

@jdcxw

Not had time to experiment

I played with this a bit and have some results you can examine.
If you will be doing this a lot it would be worth it to experiment with the de-focus until the results you want are accomplished.
Remember that you can do any project in sections by ignoring some parts and letting them have different focus ranges.
So after a fast defocus ‘engrave’, you can ignore that part and enable the rest of the design for normal interactions (provided nothing has been moved inside the machine it will all go where it is suppose to).

Fun With De-Focused Score - time saver experiment

I decided to take some time and experiment with the de-focus score (thickness adjustment) concept. I chose this butterfly design specifically because it took a lot of fiddling to get it to work in a 3 step process. Engrave body, engrave wing, cut design. I was working with it as nodes primarily. Maybe a better way to do it, but it was what I used to finally get it to laser in 3 steps the way I wanted it to. First part of the experiment worked well, in that it took me just a few minutes to mak…

[eflyguy]

You can also set different focus heights for different steps in your design. You don’t need to break it up over multiple prints. When the next step has a different assigned focus height, the machine will pause for a few seconds while the focus is adjusted, then pick up with that step.

[shop]

i definitely use defocused scores to replicate an engraved line. much much faster.

[rbtdanforth]

@jdcxw

as it scans back & forth till rectangle is created. Time consuming!! …

I tried once to do an “engrave” at 35 LPI and it is like scoring lines perhaps 1/35" apart which is very obvious lines but it does count as “engraved” and can be seen as such by the eye, particularly if just marking metal, and it is pretty fast.

[jdcxw]

Excellent to know Thank you so much for the input !