slow in scan mode

[Dan Cole]

Good morning! Over the past two weeks, I noticed whenever I run in scan mode, it is taking way too long. The size of the project I worked on this past weekend was about 14 inches long and 6 inches tall (words in script). After 4 hours, It had only covered the top inch. After being frustrated, I cleared it and wanted to see if it was something mechanical, so I just changed the scan to cut and it was done in about 45 seconds. I was running the laser at 50% power at a speed of 450 mm/sec.
I don't know if this is relevant but I have noticed when I restart the rdworks, it often resets the page configurations and even changes settings in the scan mode. I try to make sure I reset the scan mode to what I have used successfully in the past.

Any thoughts or places you would recommend I look for a solution.

Dan

[Gene Uselman]

Dan- check your scan intravel in the layers window- should be .1 +- depending on what you are doing. I have never figured out when RDworks remembers setting and when it doesn't- I always have 3-4 RDw programs open at the same time and switch back and forth so it gets confusing.

[sebastien laforet]

I was running the laser at 50% power at a speed of 450 mm/sec.

you may want to decrease speed in order to increase speed...

suppose your machine acceleration is set at 450mm/s2, it needs one whole second to accelerate, and one whole second to decelerate, so 2 seconds per line, around 20 second / mm of height, just for accelerating/decelerating.

the drawing is 14 inches = 350mm, so it is barely 0.77 seconds!!! total is 2.77 seconds per line

with a speed of 200mm/s,
you accelerate for 0.44s (far better), draw the line 1.75s (far worst), decelerate 0.44s --> total 2.63s /line

with a speed of 150mm/s,
you accelerate 0.33s, draw the line 2.33s, decelerate 0.33s --> total 3s /line (obviously, this is "too" slow, you lose time)

obviously, there is an optimal value depending on your accel settings, your speed setting, and the width of the drawing. The more large the drawing is, the most efficient it is to increase speed.

for not so large drawing, it will be faster to set a low speed so you don't lose too much time in accel/decel. it is important to check what your acceleration setting is, it will help you see what is the max speed that you want.

you can change the accel, and see how the machine reacts. if too much, you may lose steps and/or precision, it is usually not recommanded to go too high even if the machine is supposed to be able to sustain those numbers.

[Dan Cole]

Wow...thanks guys...very quick to respond. I love this group!!!
Gene-I too have about 4 screens running at the same time but I try to always double check my notes on my scans and cuts but was missing something.
Sebastien-I will slow it down....I guess I should have thought through it. I am usually working on smaller projects and since this one was larger, I thought-Speed it up so I can move on....fail!
Thanks guys!

[Dan Cole]

today was my first chance at your fixes and yeah....that was it! For some reason it defaulted to .001m in the scan so it was taking (I guess) 100 extra passes for each .1 mm. So now I just need to turn the power up a bit and it is perfect. Thank you for keeping me from pulling my hair out!
Dan