Hectic laser cutter

I can haz cookie and coffee now ? oh and a sock ?

That is a very interesting technique and very efficient for conserving movement - resulting in the incredible speed. In the middle would be a moving laser head (as our GF has), and at the other end of the spectrum (there is some kind of pun thereā€¦) would be a fixed laser and moving media. I donā€™t know if that exists, or if there would be any context in which it would be beneficial.

Thanks for sharing. I love learning about different approaches to technical problems.

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This is the closest Iā€™ve seen, Alan Reeves on Vimeo: can you etch it?

I just canā€™t help but wonder fi that might have been quicker if it been done with vectors. or even rotated 90 since there are so many lines with so little drawn per pass.

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Hard to say if it would be much different. more short passes would typically be faster though, since non-engraving travel speeds can be faster.

The main question would be total travel distance while at cutting speed. So you want the direction with the most short lines from one side to the next (in a vaguely square net envelope).

The start and end of the cut had shorter pass lengths than the middle in this orientation. If rotated then you still have shorter passes under ā€œCook,ā€ but not much shorter at the other end.

Doing it by vector probably would be faster, since there are large voids. But I havenā€™t seen any software that breaks down a job in concentric vector lines. Which would be much harder anyway, and would require that all engraved spaces are the same width, and a multiple of the kerf width. Or if width ever changes, it changes one full kerf at a time, no continual slopes. (Otherwise you have some spots which get double engraved, so lose uniformity in engraving depth)

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My thought on rotating it is head travel seems much faster left to right, and the engraved image seems to have more needing burn points per raster line and itā€™s not seemingly a square image, so the rotation might pick up some efficiencies there. But as you say speed moving vs burning is another wrinkle.

also wow. what a crazy interesting algorithm/software problem, the concentric vector lines. Iā€™m going to have to try and play with that just to make my mind give me peace on it.

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Grab the slicer software for any 3D printer, and tell it to use concentric infill, at 100%. Then look at a single slice of the resulting model and notice all of the voids at the tips of various pathways.

Far better to watch an actual print while concentric infill is being used, but the software shows you actual straight lines, while in real printing since the filament is semi-liquid there is some settling which fills in quite a few of the gaps.

You do contour fill in CorelDraw that would do just that. Never tested that vs. Raster, but maybe on Tuesday I can try two identical boxes, one rastered and one done with vectors and time each oneā€¦

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Would be nifty to see the results. The vector OUGHT to win. But the raster will probably have the better look to the final product.

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