  We report on a general method for the rapid production of quantum degenerate
gases. Using 174Yb, we achieve an experimental cycle time as low as (1.6-1.8) s
for the production of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of (0.5-1) x 10^5 atoms.
While laser cooling to 30\muK proceeds in a standard way, evaporative cooling
is highly optimized by performing it in an optical trap that is dynamically
shaped by utilizing the time-averaged potential of a single laser beam moving
rapidly in one dimension. We also produce large (>10^6) atom number BECs and
successfully model the evaporation dynamics over more than three orders of
magnitude in phase space density. Our method provides a simple and general
approach to solving the problem of long production times of quantum degenerate
gases.
