Is it possible to create a database with all corel datas?

[Rodne Gold]

This idea has been formulated and brought up before and has never amounted to anything. I for one am prepared to give away some secrets and tips regarding lasering in the spirit of sharing and altruism , but hardly give away all my settings on my machine which have cost me a LOT of time and money to develop just to add to a database that is not going to be of any help to me and perhaps even harm me on a competitive basis. The only way you are going to get the correct settings is harvest them from those that have gone thru the trial and error routine and the database is hardly likely to help them much anyway. Seems to me the only ppl it will help are total newbies or those with ultra cheap machines with no support from manufacturers in terms of starting points

Now to be real blunt about it , the cheap machines are a problem to those that have paid the price in terms of $ and time to get theirs up and running and perfect their settings, why would those folk give others a running start and lower the barriers to entry in an already overtraded field?
Sorry if you think im calling a spade a bloody shovel , but that , combined with the myriad of variables to consider makes this , imho, a waste of time.
Apart from anything else , how long do you think it would take to gather the data on every material and every machine and the relative differences between them to make the data at all meaningful?

[Thad Nickoley]

I have to agree with Rodne, not only is every machine different but so is all different materials. The only wat to get the results that YOU like is to start with the manufacturers recomendations and adjust.

practice, practice, practice,

I will have to admit if the data base existed i would probably look at it often

[Scott Shepherd]

There should be entries for correction factors. Just as you would adjust power on a 60W laser to be 50% of that used on a 30W laser, you would determine the adjustment factor for speed in the same manner. If machine 'A' is capable of 100ips and machine 'B' is capable of 50ips, you have a 2:1 conversion factor...entered easily enough into a cell to modify all other values.

Settings on the laser don't work on linear scales. You'd think they would, but they don't, and it's in most manuals that the settings are not linear. So you can't use the 60 is 2x 30 ratio. Doesn't work like that. Also, I have no idea how many IPS my machine is and I seriously doubt most people know that info. Like I said, knock yourself out, but you'll understand what I'm talking about once you start gathering the data. It's too many factors and variables that are unknown. Telling someone that Rowmark Blk/white engraves at 100S 40P on a 45W machine means nothing. You can't engrave detail work like 4pt fonts at 100S and 40P for that material and keep the sharp detail on some machines. It's much larger than "Material/wattage/speed/power". It has to take into account for what you're trying to engrave as well. That's the variable you can determine a "X factor" for. Go for it, you'll figure it out once it gets going and you get entries for the same material that range all the way from 25P to 80P for the exact same material. Then what? If your range for the same material is a variation of 55, then how valuable was the information in the first place?

You seem to make the assumption that most out there are using US-made machines with these menus built in or have been doing this for half of their life. I'm sure you realize there are a surprising number of Chinese laser owners out there, and due to low price and high availability the ownership base is growing quickly.

Actually I'd guess that the Chinese laser owners are probably less than 3% on this forum. I haven't been doing this all my life either. Just a year or so. And I've had to learn it the same way Rodne mentioned.

[James Stokes]

I will chime in too. I am in the camp that a data base would be useless. I had a tube recharged on a 35 watt laser, the settings I used before the recharge are useless now. My laser is running much hotter than ever before. When that laser was brand new I was engraving granite at about 35 power. Now the very same image I am using 25 power. I have had to cut the power by 10 on every thing.

[Ed Newbold]

Although many are claiming a database of this nature would be worthless, I must humbly disagree.

A good database of machine-materials-settings combinations would be an invaluable tool to anyone looking for a good starting point when:

a. creating new products
b. using new/different materials
c. having a computer crash and loosing your existing settings
d. getting a tube recharged and looking for 'common' settings
e. experimenting with new settings on old materials
f. the reasons can go on, ad nauseum...


Heck, I can set up an Excel spreadsheet accessible on the web if you like. Just point me in the right direction with the basic fields you'd like to see populated. I envision a different TAB for each different MACHINE, but all tabs would be arranged with the same basic layout. Something like:

TAB: Universal M-300
Columns: MATERIAL, CUT/ENGRAVE, SPEED, POWER, PPI, NOTES

Sample data would look something like this:
MATERIAL: CUT/ENGRAVE: SPEED: POWER: PPI: NOTES:
Wood, C, 5, 100, 300, -
Wood, E, 100, 45, 200, -

Anyway, that's my two-cents worth. Let me know if you want me to set it up, 'cause I can get it going very quickly.

Cheers,

[Mike Null]

I'm going to side with the camp that says the info is not that helpful. Not only for the reasons previously mentioned but because people don't seem to be willing to do simple searches. How many times do you see the question "what laser should I buy". I don't believe those people, on this forum, took the time to look up the comments of owners.

There is somnething available in a WIKI format you might have a look at.

http://www.ladyada.net/resources/laser/settings.html

[Roy Brewer]

Let me know if you want me to set it up, 'cause I can get it going very quickly.

Ed,
Can I straddle the fence?
Please go ahead and set it up. I think the main place where this might be beneficial, would be the list of materials on which our forum members are lasering. 1) I can see (especially newbies or people thinking about purchasing a laser) many looking through this and saying "...matboard! Now I didn't even think about that application."

If, however, you are expecting it to be used extensively, you'll be disappointed. Our distributorship, for instance, trains all clients that if they are about to use a material with which they are not familiar, to start with hi speed, lo power and increase the applied NRG until they get the results they need. I'm relatively certain that with a few exceptions, this would be faster than searching the worksheet and would most often yield superior results.

This hypothetical database, at best, would be less useful than the settings supplied by the machine manufacturer. At best, the gleaned information would be suspect if we can't get Rodney and similar "power users" on this forum to contribute their settings.

Having said all that, it doesn't make a idea/tool "bad" just because a tiny percentage of people would use it a tiny percentage of the time. In addition to 1) mentioned above, I can see the following scenarios might cause one to peruse the data:
2) New material, only one chance to get it right...
3) Chinese owners whose manufacturers don't give *any* idea where to start.

Subtract from those scenarios, however, the people who would not remember where to find the spreadsheet and would just post "Hey, what settings is someone using for ??????????"

[Ed Newbold]

Ed,
Can I straddle the fence?
Please go ahead and set it up. I think the main place where this might be beneficial, would be the list of materials on which our forum members are lasering. 1) I can see (especially newbies or people thinking about purchasing a laser) many looking through this and saying "...matboard! Now I didn't even think about that application."

If, however, you are expecting it to be used extensively, you'll be disappointed. Our distributorship, for instance, trains all clients that if they are about to use a material with which they are not familiar, to start with hi speed, lo power and increase the applied NRG until they get the results they need. I'm relatively certain that with a few exceptions, this would be faster than searching the worksheet and would most often yield superior results.

This hypothetical database, at best, would be less useful than the settings supplied by the machine manufacturer. At best, the gleaned information would be suspect if we can't get Rodney and similar "power users" on this forum to contribute their settings.

Having said all that, it doesn't make a idea/tool "bad" just because a tiny percentage of people would use it a tiny percentage of the time. In addition to 1) mentioned above, I can see the following scenarios might cause one to peruse the data:
2) New material, only one chance to get it right...
3) Chinese owners whose manufacturers don't give *any* idea where to start.

Subtract from those scenarios, however, the people who would not remember where to find the spreadsheet and would just post "Hey, what settings is someone using for ??????????"

Hehehe... I give up, Roy. What you say makes sense, and I'm not sure more than two people in the world would actually make use of it anyway.

So, I'll just save it for myself. I do reference my own materials/settings spreadsheet frequently, but hey, maybe that's attributable to my poor memory and seasonal jobs/products I don't do that often.

See ya!

[Doug Griffith]

The power of a "shared" database would be the large amount of data that could be interpreted however one chooses. I've already built the interface and am now integrating the back end. It isn't costing more than my time and if it helps anyone, great. I just hope the laser community doesn't keep their settings so close to their heart that they are unwilling to share.

Cheers

[Mike Mackenzie]

Doug,

I will be happy to share with you and others ULS settings and tricks when you are ready. I have an extensive library of techniques that work with the ULS systems.

The real key to this is to make sure people know that these are suggestions and will / might need some adjusting.

What we find is that the settings we would save for our customers are based off of the laser power at the table. This varies from system to system. It typically is never under the rated laser power of the tube however we have 60 watt laser tubes that are putting out 78 watts at the table.

So this is where I see a little difficulty when working with this data. Also the ULS systems use a very unique Image enhancement within there drivers that is another issue that would have to be added into the data base as well as Air assist, Print mode, scaling functions, Len's size, focus, etc.

This would be a huge challenge but I am willing to assist from the ULS end of it.

[Doug Griffith]

Thanks Mike,
I attached a pic illustrating how the interface is playing out. Right now there's just dummy data in there. Light grey "blocks" indicate that data exists. The grey columns/rows follow the mouse to make navigation more intuitive. Multiple settings will flow down the left. All data is AJAX so no page reloads, just data. I'm going to put in the option for shared settings and private settings. All fields are dynamic so new substrates, measurements, machines, etc... can be added by users. I'm curious if this should be moderated? Otherwise someone could enter a bunch of bogus data.

Also, what other data should be collected?
air assist?
print mode?
scaling functions?
len's size?
focus?
resolution?

Any recommendations are welcome. I'm pretty stuck on the column/row navigation though.

Cheers,
Doug

[Mike Null]

If you decide to proceed with this I would suggest that you consider the term "watts" instead of percentage for power. ex.30 watt machine @ 50% would be 15 watts.

Also speed should be in inches per second rather than percentage. That will equalize the settings.

[Doug Griffith]

If you decide to proceed with this I would suggest that you consider the term "watts" instead of percentage for power. ex.30 watt machine @ 50% would be 15 watts.

Also speed should be in inches per second rather than percentage. That will equalize the settings.

I'm thinking an advanced option (or all manufacturers) would follow your recommendations while the default option would tie the selected manufacturer/watts to the percentage/speed settings. This would make it easier for inexperienced users to understand.

I've only used Epilog machines and am curious what verbage other manufacturers use for settings.

Thanks again

[Scott Shepherd]

Model of machine and year would be helpful, I would think. As mentioned before, there is a big difference in two machines 10 years apart, wattage being equal.

[Mike Mackenzie]

You would need to add PPI, color, DPI, Image Density or LPI as well. The ULS systems do not have to do color mapping we just assign a color to do what we want (Raster, Vector, combined, & skip).