I use strong 1cm by 4cm magnets (strong but not terribly strong) to hold my material flat. Now with the new feature of the air assist fan beeing monitored the GF pauses and aborts almost every job. (see my latest logs, it happened in every single cut).
Is there a way to get the possibility to confirm the allert and tell the GF to keep going with the job? (or does it exist allready?)
At the moment I have to open the lid, rearrange the magnets and restart the job from the beginning. That causes me terrible cut-edges and lots of burning on the back side for the double cuted parts of my project . Please Glowforge-Team help me!
Happened to me this weekend for the first time. IMHO the new-and-improved feature stinks in that you have to start over when it happens. One ends up with a waste of material in almost all cases! Magnets used to be perfect for dealing with warped PG material. Now there is no good option for the middle of a sheet of material. Arrgh!
For material with a bow or cup, the best method I’ve found (beyond storing it properly and letting it acclimate) is to lay it so the bow is laid flat in the middle, which causes the edges to bow up. Those can then be flattened with either hold down pins or magnets.
I guess magnets work on 1/8” material. I pretty much only use 1/4” and the neo magnets don’t really do anything on that.
Way back in the early days of getting my PreRelease unit and before I even had any powerful magnets, I used to place a heavy wrench in the middle of my material (placed out of the design area of course). You just have to make sure the air assist shroud will clear it.
Thanks for the hint! I had tried that. But if i place magnets on the 2 top corners, thats still enough to trigger the alert… had many bad cuts and wastes material since then.
I may have been the first to complain, and they shut off the tool on my machine. I would prefer notice that would either allow you to fix and continue or wait till the job is finished. but just shutting the subroutine off is better than the ruined work, especially as the machine was a replacement and near virgin.
Yep. They’re great. I use those a lot. I haven’t had them cause the fan alert but I’ve taken to adjusting all magnet positions the last several months so don’t know if it’s the rectangular magnets or the increased attention to where I position that has kept me out of the alert zone.
I have added steel shielding to all my magnets that go into the Glowforge to reduce the field above the magnets. I am also keeping an eye out for what is called “Mu-metal” that is said to capture magnetic fields the best.
I’ve run into the same thing a few times since the change, and have resolved it pretty much the way you do. I am slowly getting pretty good at placing the magnets away from where the work will be going on so this problem is minimized…
Get some hard drive magnets, as they are mounted to a metal plate that blocks the magnetic field from extending above the tray. Very strong, very handy.
You could also shield your own magnets as others have mentioned.
I second the ask for a way to clear the alert and continue with a print. I’m working on a huge project with warped Medium Draftboard which you don’t stock anymore (and no one has responded to my email asking if you would ask the mfr of the Medium Draftboard when they’ll have it again) so I’m trying to conserve material and now unless I can find a way to clear this error and move forward, this whole sheet is basically shot.
That’s a great idea for a feature - thanks for the suggestion! We haven’t announced anything like that yet, but I’m going to send it to our product team with a note that it came from a customer request.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll make sure the team gets them.
I’m going to close this thread - if the problem reoccurs (when magnets are not present), go ahead and post a new topic.
