A tip on making the thunder laser faster for rastering

Laser
#1

RDWorks wants to scan the full width of the object being rastered, full left to full right. The burn below was going to take 2 hours using RDWork’s optimization no matter which settings I used for path optimization.

I instead organized my objects into layers where the carriage would move top to bottom several times in groups which would cut the actual time the carriage is moving without the laser on.

The grouping below cuts the time down from 2 hours to 22 minutes (based on simulation). YMMV - have fun. These seems to make an even bigger difference if rastering at lower speeds since the carriage doesn’t speed up between burns.

Image

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#2

That’s a great share. Thank you!

#3

Great point,
I’ve done this in the past, but never thought to share the technique. Breaking up your raster into individual sections can have a huge effect. Nice work.

#4

Great way to control your job.

One of the Scan (raster) options is the checkbox “Independent Output”. This option treats each object independently. IE, it will raster a letter at a time versus the entire word. Or what’s on the left before what’s on the right.

It doesn’t give you as much control as @evanfort approach, but can be useful.

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