settings for Rabbit laser

[Cindy Rhoades]

I am working with my local high school on a project and they have an 80 watt Rabbit laser, we are attempting to run a large oak sign (38x28). The software is telling them that it will take 7 hours to run one side of the sign, that seems like an awful long time to me. What settings would you use for this I will attach a copy of the artwork. I have made the necessary changes to be able to import it into their software but this is what the sign should look like. The outside border is a vector which I will go back and cut out by hand.

[Chuck Stone]

I don't know Rabbits, so I wouldn't know settings. But that does seem like
a long time.

A couple things you can do to speed things up, change the color of
the two left side leaves to something else, but use the same speed
and power settings as the black. Same for the right side. That way the
laser won't have to travel 38" back and forth over the blank areas just
to make a few dots. I would also split the border in half for the same
reason. The way it looks now, it would take the same amount of time
to raster the entire image as it would to just do the border.

If you split the border in half and make it two colors, then the head would
only move a few pixels back and forth across one side of the image at a time.
Might cut the time by 90%. (dunno, just an exaggerated guess)

[Cindy Rhoades]

Chuck

I spent this afternoon changing the colors of everything the border is blue for vector and the text is broken up into three different colors so that everything can be run separately so the machine doesn't have to travel the full distance of the sign it will do one image at a time but with that being said the tree still takes an hour alone to run.

[Chuck Stone]

the tree *is* pretty intricate, and the tree alone is about 12x16
not sure what kind of settings you're running or how deep you're
going into the oak.. but I just ran a 12x18 this afternoon that took
about that long. (taking the silver backing off of old mirror glass) and
it will still need another pass. But I've got a dying 30W tube. I'd think
that an 80 watt machine would mark oak a bit faster than mine!

[Doug Novic]

It is the size that will take the time for engraving. I set at 850 speed and 600 power with .032 scan gap on my Rabbit for large oak pieces. This will speed it up a bit but is not a cure all.