The other thing with this estimate in the simulator is that the "idle" time which is when the laser is not firing is calculated on the basis of the "work" rate and if there is a lot of white space it can grossly overestimate. For example, we were doing a few small cuts in a large sheet of acrylic and the travel time between them was grossly overestimated based on a speed of something like 10mm/s which means it thinks it needs a few minutes to cross the table. So I go off the work time and add a bit for white space.

Quote Originally Posted by Rich Harman View Post
Here's an issue that I discovered today. Laserworks has a nice feature (preview) that will tell you how long the work will take. It is very useful when working up a quote. The problem comes when there are different speeds.

If you have two identical items, one above the other with the top one set to 5mm/sec and the other 10mm/sec, the estimated time that it reports will be as if both pieces are cut at 5mm/sec. If you swap them around then the total time will be reported at 10mm/sec.

The workaround is to make sure that you get the times on each speed setting separately.