Sorry it took me so long to get back to you(I was blowing out candles).
I’m looking to fit 4"x5" plates into to work space with the most rapid job time. Each plate would need to be raster engraved the full length of the plate. It has a thick border and some info on the inside.
It could be a very large order but if it would take over 8 hours to do 8 plates than it might not be worth it for me to persue.
It shouldn’t take eight hours, but if you’re concerned about it, create a file and someone can check it for you.
Then you’ll have an exact estimate.
Yep you’re right. I hate it when questions drive me nuts during the work day. But I’m home now and the kids are on their way to bed. Let’s see if this upload works.
EDIT: nope, how about zipped Glowforge test file.svg.zip (4.9 KB) There we go!
Actually it did work. A little small (you have to override the settings in the upload tag) but a right click|SaveAs worked fine.
The stars are pretty evenly distributed so they’ll like require the full right/left traverse of the head. It’s just that it won’t be burning all the time. I can’t check tonight because mine is too hot (but I did get most of my chiller tray done - just forgot about the support rail under the bottom - cool coming soon I hope 
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Exactly. Also the sides need to be engraved.
Can’t wait to see that post!
Okay at 80/335/340LPI (which should be more than enough for what you want to do with it) : 3 hrs 5 minutes
If you up the LPI to 675 it will take 6 hours 10 minutes.
Well this is just a test file. I would be making identification tags with serial numbers and logos on them. But this gives me a good idea of what it would take.
Thank you very much for helping me everyone!
Might be able to squeegle it down a bit then. Use scores instead of engraving the outline box. Depending on the engrave, if you can then shift the engrave placement (by changing the placement of the tags on the material) so they’re offset and don’t require full passes of the laser you might be able to cut it down a bunch. The final design and the layout of the tags is going to be key to minimizing the job time.
I’ll see what I can do.
If you can prevent long expanses of engraves then the GF does a fair job of breaking it up into separate smaller runs within the project that can really cut down on the time it does its thing (it’s not linear though because you get more direction changes occurring which are somewhat slower than the engrave itself). It’s one of those things that once you have a unit and can play with options you can get surprising results with.
Let’s see what this does. Engrave the one star and text. The rest is score. Glowforge test file.svg.zip (6.2 KB)
Realized the stroke and engrave were the same color. here is an update. Glowforge test file.svg.zip (9.1 KB)