Alignment/Print Head hitting the far right wall

Yesterday while printing a boardgame organizer insert, I noticed that several items on the far right of the cut came out completely misaligned, But only after a certain point in the cutting process. I was cutting several rectangular items at one time and it appeared that the printhead lost calibration about 3/4 of the way through.

So, I decided today to try out calibration to make sure that the alignment was good and see where in the process the error occurred.

I printed several copies of the gift template, one in each corner of the material and one right after a fouled template print. I’m attaching sequential screenshots below.

As far as I can tell, anything within about a quarter of an inch of the far right limit on the print area causes the head of the laser to bump and throw off the entire print from that point forward. That includes any prints started after the failed print without recalibrating.

Before the final print at the bottom right, I actually recalibrated, leveled everything again, and still had the same issue

Anyone have any thoughts?

This has been reported a few times on the forum. Sometimes support asks them to print a gift of good measure in the front right on Proofgrade Draftboard and post a picture of the result. I think more than one machine has been replaced over the issue.

You were going to post pictures of your result, right?

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Yes, that’s why I printed the test prints. Unfortunately, my phone isn’t cooperating with uploading images. More to come…

Thank you!

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I am having this issue too, but I believe it’s a matter of the actual cut size not being really what is advertised. The cut area is only about 19" and the head needs room to decelerate from fast moves like engraving. I am hoping that GF will solve this via software so we can actually use the already too small of a bed (Why they didn’t make it 24" wide is beyond me)

If you haven’t, consider making your own post, new post in problems and support – that will alert staff that you’re having an issue.

I’m not sure I understand why the engrave or bed size would be responsible for the laser head physically hitting the side of the unit. I would definitely get help from glowforge to diagnose the problem and get it corrected.

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The one you printed in the upper right shows the canonical problem. It does the engrave first, from bottom to top. That’s why the labels at the bottom are more or less where they were supposed to be and then later everything is shifted left.

My guess is that your diagnosis is correct. It’s trying to travel too far to the right and losing registration. Hopefully support will get back to you soon.

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Thanks for letting us know about this. I’m sorry to hear you ran into trouble. All the details you provided are very helpful.

We’re looking into it now. I’ll update this thread when I have more information.

I’ve taken a look and I’m sorry to say that your Glowforge has a problem we can’t fix remotely. I want you to have a reliable unit, so I’m recommending we replace this one. I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details. I’m so sorry for the bad news.

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