Is there or should there be a maximum time that one person ca use a laser without yielding it to another person?
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No.
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No, but thereās some unwritten etiquette:
(1) Do not tie up the laser by doing design work at those computers.
(2) Do not let your friends piggyback onto your spot in the queue. They need to get their own place in the queue.
(3) If you have a long job with multiple segments, let a short job (or two) work in with you.
(4) If you have a really long job, try not to do it during āprime timeā.
(5) If youāre a serious laser hog, then at some point peer pressure, the jeers of the crowd, and the pitchforks will regulate your usage.
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Add an option āIs any part of the work for profit?ā Weāll be able to get a feel for how production jobs are impacting the queue, instead of just speculating.
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Do the check, but donāt prevent adding to the queue if it fails. There are a number of members where the teacher failed to properly register the class in AD. Perhaps flash up some verbiage about needing to check with their teacher to get added to AD.
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The rotary will work on all three of the Thunder lasers, but there is currently only one rotary. Please have that as an option, if possible.
ā¦and if it fails log it. Log it good. Thatās why we have databases. 
(Seriously. Such things should be dumped to a database.)
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āProfitā may be too strict, if you want to track jobs the user is selling.
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Iām open to wording suggestions. Got an idea?
the subject of commercial work is covered in the DMS rules Section 9:
Commercial Use
-The Dallas Makerspace is based on open source ideals and thus encourages its membership to embrace those ideals as well, however members reserve the rights to all of their creations.
-DMS may invoice members for incurring costs to DMS significantly in excess of their monthly dues. Determination of excess to be submitted by Committee Chairs and the member billed by resolution of the Board.
As HAAS supervisor, the question comes up on this also. As a committee we voted early on that it was ok (within reason). We have several members who are working on their own āfor profitā projects and up to now has not been a problem. Most bring their own specialty bits and have not been time hogs or work non-prime time hours. NOW, HAVING SAID THAT - these are mostly one-offs and I say take all the time you need. BUT, If someone were to be doing commercial work for their employer on our machines - then they are taking advantage of us as a ātool rentalā place. Oh no, weāre not. that will likely get invoiced at a rate (think expensive) on par with commercial prices.
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āwe donāt govern what you do with the stuff you are laser cutting. Please make sure you pay for your cut timeā
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Commercial Use rather than Profit.
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This is a thoughtful discussion re: commercial vs for personal profit vs hobby/personal use. A discussion that should have itās own thread - at a later time, should data or widespread user experience indicate.
I am responding to the topic at hand: features to add to the Laser RFID queue.
I get regular negative feedback from users re: the wait times. My response is invariably āproblem will reduce when new lasers arriveā. But in my head I wonder if more lasers = more laser users (some with large production jobs) = same wait issue on a different scale. @Billās work is offering a opportunity to quantify the issue, as opposed to relying on anecdotal stories. That is, taking the emotion out of it. Maybe it will turn out to be nothing. So much better to be able to show a disgruntled user that information rather than have a pointless argument.
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What stops a commercial producer from choosing the option of personal project? If we have members willing to steal our tools I have to imagine theyād have no issue lying about laser usage reasons.
Agreed. If later it turns out we have dishonest users, that is another issue at another time. Need to attempt data collection first.
EDIT: The Space and Laser do not treat for-profit production jobs as stealing tools. These are permitted. However, they are not without controversy - a controversy above my paygradeā¦ Am only trying to gauge impact to wait times.
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nice. if that only took 7 hours iād say it did pretty good.
everyone should keep in mind that when you double the surface area to raster it quadruples the engraving time. I run into that everyday when people ask why going from a 1" stamp to 3" stamp more than doubled the price. (uh, 'cause it now takes 9 times as long). cheers!
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To clarify I wasnāt implying for profit production runs are stealing. I was referring to the actual theft of tools that seems to be a common occurrence with the hand tools, bits, etcā¦
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1 inch to 3 inches - difference is two inches. Double=2, so the price should only double, right? 
thatās the new math. yes.
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Lets not forget that PolyPrinter used to use our HAAS to machine aluminum parts before they got their own CNC mill, and they continue to occasionally use the laser for cutting parts. They have been VERY good about using those tools in off hours and supporting DMS in many waysā¦ so just because equipment is being used for external business, DMS doesnāt necessarily suffer from it.
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