Camera focus appears to be off

This is with a barcode essentially just beneath the camera. The lens is perfectly clean.

Is it supposed to look better than this? I would have guessed it would be sharper just beneath the lens.

Often until the correct material thickness is loaded in, the image will appear blurry. Once it finishes reading the barcode, or you’ve manually entered the material type (or thickness in artwork details), the material will come into focus.

My experience is the unit will focus at the last height setting entered (unless you’ve just turned it on, and it focuses on the empty crumb tray first), and it does refocus once the material type is updated to what you now have on the bed.

What @bansai8creations said and i will add that even directly under the camera mine is still a little blurry but it will still read the code, but only directly under the camera…

Pretty sure this doesn’t matter. Material height modifies the dewarp algorithm and the crop. The camera is a fixed focus lens.

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While that is true the material height does enter in the focus of the camera, i can say and there are many post that will state the blurriness of the camera on the full size PG sheets and that the camera wont read the code…

The lens would already be in focus due to reading the barcode. This seems more to do with the amount of information a low megapixel fish eye camera can take it. It doesn’t have any sort of mechanical focus, so it can only use digital. You can get a similar effect with smartphones by lowering the megapixel count the camera is using, then zooming in with it’s digital zoom. There just isn’t enough information, as well as Glowforge probably doesn’t have sharpness optimized in its output algorithm. I also get that this is a matter of inches, but again, they cut a lot of corners, and the reason I bring up smartphone cameras, is because I recall GF specifically mentioning they used smartphone cameras due to the cost and availability of them.

That seems to be normal from what I have seen on my machines and from what others have posted. As long as the code is read I think the camera is working as intended.

Heheh… I ran into this problem the first week after I got my GF. Thing is, I’d printed on it pretty much constantly for the whole week.
The camera just kept getting more and more out of focus! What the heck!?!?!
Then a co-worker came to watch a cut happening, and was like, wow! It’s really dirty in there…

blink blink<<

Clean your lens.

Use a nice soft cloth and wipe it off. I just happened to use a white iPhone screen microfibre cloth, and yeah. There was a ton of smoke dust on it after wiping.
Hope that’s the issue!

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:grin: That’s how I know it’s time to clean it - if it looks fuzzy to me on the screen I figure it’s probably fuzzy to the GF.

Thank for reaching out and providing that screenshot. This looks good and matches what I’ve seen from other units. Please note that it’s possible for the QR code to look blurry, but still be interpreted successfully by the app. If you’re running into trouble with alignment or consistent Proofgrade material recognition, please start a new thread or email us at support@glowforge.com.