New? Join Today! » Create an Account | Sign In

Q&A

Question

I have 100,000 parts to laser engrave with non-sequential numbers. I can do eight at a time. I figure on making a template in Corel X3 and "setting" eight numbers on each layer. I have two questions: is this the best way to do this project, and how many layers can I have in a Corel file without it crashing? Thanks
Asked by - CLSGRAPHICS2100@WOH.RR.COM

Answer

Richard Korbyl's picture
Richard Korbyl • Wednesday, February 8, 2012

 

First, congratulations on such a large order! Second, my condolences on such a large order! Jobs like this involve maximum efficiency. A three-second difference will make a drastic difference on the overall project. Your biggest road block with obtaining productivity will be CorelDraw. With a project so large, you may want to utilize a print merge rather than manually entering the serial numbers. Of course, it would be great if you could get an electronic file provided by your customer.
While CorelDraw has simplified the print merge process over the years, it will take some time to learn and understand this technique. I would start with reviewing the Corel documents regarding print merge. Another huge challenge will be the limits on memory, especially with your laser. It is hard to say what your laser will accept, as it will depend on whether you are incorporating more lines of text or graphics.
I know if this project was in our shop we would have our own techs create a custom "macro" which is a small little program that runs in the background. These macros run in conjunction with CorelDraw and can be a life saver. Likely, we would design the macro where it would feed the laser only one page (eight parts) at a time. In addition, it could be set up where you would press enter once your laser bed was filled with eight unmarked parts. This would help you streamline the process and make it less confusing.
You might be able to find an existing macro program on such websites such as http://www.macromonster.com. Because your laser acts as printer, another option would be to get a third-party piece of software which replaces eight different fields with a new serial number. Then you just "print," or in your case, laser that page.
Tags:

(2) Comments

| Leave a comment
gr8print's picture
gr8print
February 21, 2012 8:58 pm

We are primarily a printing company with a substantial part of our business coming from the signs and engraving sector. I'm still mystified why people use Corel rather than the Adobe products (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop). This illustration is a perfect example of how Corel seems crippled (unless you resort to scripts or third part apps) when InDesign has good built in variable print capability to run off things like badges, nameplates, etc from an excel file.

While not meaning to demean Corel, I'm wondering if my engraver employee just doesn't know the fine points of Corel or whether I'm justified in making her learn the Adobe Suite.

Dave Young
Allegra of Tysons Corner, VA
www.printallegra.net

CAlex6977's picture
CAlex6977
February 21, 2012 12:29 pm

I personally use Vison Pro for this. I believe its a skin of Signlab. I create sheets of 100s and 1000s of individual signs. I just create the single layout then the Vision Pro creates multiples using a tab delimited text file that I determine with all the changing information. Good luck

Life is only what you make it.

Leave a Comment

Premium Subscription

Please sign in to leave a comment

Click here to Sign in. Don't have an account? Join Today (It's Free!)