How is print time calculated?

How is print time calculated?

I ran two identical jobs back to back and there was a fairly big difference in the print time? I would have thought that the print time for a job that uses the same file and same settings would be…the same? So why the changes?

I noticed it previously but never really bothered as it was 10 seconds here or there. This was a quick job 3 minutes 26 seconds the first run and then 4 minutes 30 seconds immediately afterwards.

I then ran a longer job which yesterday was 40 minutes and today was 60 minutes?

Any input or clarity is appreciated.

It also has to do with bed placement. Does your job have an engraving component? If it does and its closer to the edge the laser can’t go as fast because it needs space to decelerate. I noticed this with my first unit and Dan confirmed that it does have to do with where it is on the bed

Thanks. Yes engrave on all the files…hmmm. The larger job is pretty much the whole width of the bed so the only difference in placement would be on the Y axis which I wouldn’t think would have too much an effect on timing. I could understand that if it was the X axis though with acceleration and deceleration coming into play.

IIRC dan mentioned once they partially use a learning algorithm for figuring out the paths. I’m used to seeing basically the same time for the same job, but if part of the alg is a black box this type of thing popping up can happen, albeit rarely.

You say the bulk of your job is a large engrave. I highly doubt there is any black box here. It is just back and forth, back and forth. Assuming you didn’t change your speed or lpi settings, dan did announce some big changes yesterday. These changes were meant to speed things up, not slow them down, but maybe you found a niche case??

It is also possible they changed the default settings for engraves. So maybe you didn’t change anything, but if you were using defaults they could have changed. Just a thought.

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I don’t know if it’s the case here, but orienting your engraves horizontally vs vertically can make a huge difference in engrave time.

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Yes all possibilities, just seemed to me to be big changes. I will keep an eye on it especially when running the same jobs as mentioned.

@cynd11 Yes I had seen that in the past orientation was the same in these cases.

Cheers.

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