Mine has always maxed out at 10.97".
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I think you’re creating some confusion in your own thread. You can get just short of 19.5” in width. You can get just short of 11” in height. Both dimensions depend on the operation and speed. There is no way to override that right now.
You can create a jig in order to allow for alignment to cut larger pieces in two operations. There are numerous posts in the forum where people have had to do that; even on basics. I have cut up to 14” in height so far by using such a jig.
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You can also get more height by using the snapmarks. (You have to have an inverted pair to print, and a right-side-up pair to match in the file.)
Okay, 11" in height then. The spec says 11 inches, not “just short of 11 inches” and I’ve set the speed to the lowest setting possible, which tells me the software is not doing what the spec says it should, so I was hoping GF could fix that or suggest a way for me to change it. If 0.03 is one step of the motor controlling the head, maybe GF can round the other direction?
I can go through and adjust the CAD to be just short of 11 inches and make the print still work. It might be interesting to try out the snap marks idea (though I don’t really want the marks on the finished product). But I already re-did the piece from 11.5, so I was hoping not to redo it again.
No, the spec says:
That has been updated a number of times over the course of the development, and is less than originally planned (although depth of cutting area was increased), but I believe @dan has stated that the intention is to eventually increase the cutting area. Unfortunately, until that happens, we have to use work arounds.
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Let’s be clear. While there may come a day when it’s possible, there is currently no way for you to cut 11.00" vertically. I hope that answers your question.
I was going off what cust support said when I couldn’t cut 11.5". I was told 11x19.5. So I re-did everything to 11. Sigh. Metric system.
Again, thanks everyone for the help and advice.
Yep, it doesn’t make me happy, but it does answer the question:slightly_smiling_face:
thanks Tom.
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In any case 279 mm is only 10.984 inches and 11 inches 279.4 mm
you are measuring 278.64 mm so less than half a millimeter
I know, I know. 0.03" and I have to redo a couple hours of work.
Can’t just scale it? Shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. I don’t know what material you are planning to cut it from, but that is probably not going to impact slot size significantly anywhere.
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I can scale it, sure, but it’s a box with a bunch of parts inside it, so I have to get all of those scaled appropriately for all the cuts, slots, tabs etc to line up again. Maybe I can just force it 0.03 inches, and sand anything that sticks up/out, etc. I’m going to do a couple of tests.
edit: most likely what I’m going to do is just shave some off the SVG files on one side.
.0015 mm top and bottom is just a pass with sandpaper, or a bit too hot with the laser, on the other hand just scaling the whole thing enough would make a quarter inch slot 0.006 inches thinner. That is not even a sanding pass.I ran into the opposite problem but had to scale by 1.7 nor 0.006
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Thanks. I considered height to be in the vertical direction, width to the back and length left to right, but we were in synch on the dimension referenced. I’m just disappointed that we keep getting less cutting area and not more.
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Well, looks like I finally got it to work, but learned a couple of things in the process. One, whatever controls the available height, it’s slightly random. I had something 278.8 mm (less than 279) that I was able to position and get to where the GFUI said “ready” but I had to go so I shut the machine off and came back later. Later, after calibration, I could not get the same file to show “ready.” I had to shrink it slightly on the UI (print seems to have worked all the same, though the finger joints are a little tight in one direction and a little loose in the other, but I think I can make it work). But it’s a little frustrating that even the reduced size is not safe to target. Best to keep things well under, or else plan to outsource cutting to someone with a professional machine.
Second thing, either speed = 100 is not at all in proportion to other speeds, or there’s a possible bug. While I was trying to get the image positions, I set speed = 100 for a cut (it was proofgrade thick draftboard, which had a standard cut speed of 125, but I though maybe a lower speed would give me an extra fraction of a mm, but no dice - turns out I don’t think speed much matters below 500? An image just too big to print at 500 was still too big to print at 100, but half a mm smaller and it was okay to print at 500… ) Well anyway, I forgot and left the speed at 100 and did the cut. It gave me 28 minutes as the cut time, which seemed long but I went ahead.
Wow. Almost set the unit on fire. the drafboard tape was lighting on fire and blowing around inside the GF. A couple of glowing embers went out the exhaust vent (I checked outside to make sure I didn’t have a grass fire going). The draftboard around the cut edges was a mess of burnt tape and what seemed to be melted something. A real mess.
I cleaned everything and ran the print again, this time at the default 125, and it was less than 6 minutes, and cut nice and clean. So something very weird about that speed = 100 setting.
Anyway, I am gluing up the outer box now. I’ll see if I can get the joints looking good enough to do the real project with the expensive plywood, or if I need to consider other options.
Cutting area is static regardless of speed.
Engrave area is dynamic and that area has a direct relationship with speed.
Also, as you noticed, 100 is much slower than 125… it’s not a linear relationship.
You can make a copy and play with this GF-provided spreadsheet to see how speed changes (old units are inches per minute).
100 is the equivalent of 4 inches per minute.
125 is the equivalent of 13.5 inches per minute
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Not actually doing any cutting, I think it safe enough to leave waiting, especially in that circumstance.
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Probably, but I wanted to save the fans as much as possible.
Thank you, that spreadsheet is good.
Well, I can say via accidental experiment, 100 speed with full power is not a setting I would recommend for proofgrade draftboard…
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For deciding a good speed in engrave or cuts I am getting a collection these testing many speeds against some other parameter.