Crumb Tray Flatness

I was cutting out a design and noticed that when the cut was complete the cut out piece dropped down about a 1/16".

I thought that the medium maple hardwood was warped but it was flat so I checked the crumb tray and it has about a 1/16" dip in the middle. See the attached pictures.


Is this normal? Will this cause focus problems if an engrave step follows the cut step?

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I don’t think so. If it were mine, I would disassemble the crumb tray, take the honeycomb and flatten it on a stone counter top or anything absolutely flat.
In your position of new warranty, You would do best to wait and see what support recommends.

If support recommends it, it is easy to do. 5 Phillips screws on the bottom and two hex head screws on each side.
Edit; I checked and the one I have is nice and flat.

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I don’t think you’ll see an issue with a slight drop. I’ve had it engrave perfectly on pieces that drop a lot farther than that. (Everything warps here.) :roll_eyes:

Engraves get ordered first in files these days anyway, so you shouldn’t see a problem with it in any case. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Back when I took the bed apart to clean it, I straighten it out (basically flatten it). I used a 123 block and a dial indicator. Took me about 30 mins to do it. But later that month GF did changes to the stock PG settings that cause it to not completely cut thru. After an email to support it started to work again.

So the take away is If you are having issues with PG materials not cutting all the way thru as commanded- contact support before you commit to doing that.

Unless you are OCD. And want to straighten it. Cause then it will be straight and flat. And you’ll know that it’s straight and flat…

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Even if it doesn’t affect focus I think it will affect camera placement accuracy if it is not flat.

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Hmmm. I may have taken a crumb tray apart to clean it. (probably didn’t though since it is a PRU and doesn’t belong to me) I would not have thought to check the flatness afterward. Did not look at first glance to be any slop in how it goes together.

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Thanks all for your sage advice. I’m still interested in seeing what the official word is going to be about the expected flatness of the crumb tray.

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About a month after I might have cleaned my PRU bed, I realised I probably should have thought about that. :innocent: Never had any problems with out of focus prints, so must not have been that critical. YMMV, of course.

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This is interesting. I don’t recall a robust discussion on the flatness of the crumb tray honeycomb. Thanks for posting.

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I’ve been wondering about how flat we could expect the crumb tray to be. With all the emphasis on measuring materials, I’m surprised it hasn’t come up before. At least, I don’t recall a previous discussion either.

Is this one of those “this is one of the few” situations or is this a “nobody’s checked before” situation? Or… one of the all-too-common “lots of people habe checked but haven’t said anything because… um… they’ve somehow got the impression that talking about flaws in the hardware or software is unwelcome here” situations?

My Glowforge was just delivered about half an hour ago (nice looking box, all four handles made it). I plan to leave the boxes sealed for a while, but if I open them I’ll check my tray.

(Answer to the question below: because I’m not sure I need/want a second laser cutter.)

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why?

But but but… I was hoping you’d revisit laser cutting dove tails. This time with a Glowforge.

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I just checked the level of my vintage (silver) tray and it is as perfectly flat as I am able to measure.

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Thanks for letting us know about this. I’ve spoken with the team and in this case, we believe it’s best to send you a new crumb tray.

You should have just received an email with details from me. If you have any questions, please let us know!

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