I’m having trouble with the maximum cutting area on my GF Basic. I’ve read through a few posts on here and from what i can gather the current max cutting area is 279mm deep by 495mm wide.
I cannot get anywhere near the 279mm depth on this machine. I cant even cut at 270mm. I’m not sure it this is a stupid mistake on my part as I’ve never tried to cut anything this size before, however it’s now an issue I need to solve.
I’ve attached a screen grab of my GF UI, the board i need to cut is right to the edge of the crumb tray, but it looks like the GF is telling me the printable area is below the tray. The item in the picture is 270mm deep.
When you move the design around do any gray “curtains” appear around the edge of the screen? If so, could you post a photo of those? if the cutting area is truly down that far, you could possibly remove the crumb tray and use something that doesn’t have a front lip to raise your material and also be able to position it correctly. There are a couple raiser designs on the forums, but those are usually for items that wouldn’t otherwise fit vertically on the tray.
Either way, GF probably wants to know if the usable area ended up off the crumb tray somehow.
First you have to set at the proper focal height, Secondly you would have to make sure that the translation from your software to the screen is correct. A slightly different DPI from expectations will throw it off, You are trying to squeeze in piece to the last millimeter so things can get tricky there, and everything has to be correct. If the wood is not absolutely level that can throw it off too.
I generally don’t try for more than 10.5 "(267mm) but if that is your need then that is what it is. I would try selecting all when it is close and using the arrow keys to just nudge it a mm or so at a time, the whole cutable area is inside the metal so a couple mm off the right side will leave a minimal waste, the bottom right corner is the only one that will show up in a preview.
This isn’t a solution to your problem but here’s something I did that I found useful. I took a piece of used 20x12" PG material, and a single line, that I stretched and rotated, then copied for the opposite side, until it was as far to the edges as the UI would allow (max zoom, moving with cursor keys until the line turned grey, then one move back). I ensured the tray was square and as far forward as possible before cutting, and the material up against the front lip of the tray.
When cut, that gave me a template that represents the maximum size my GF can cut - in my case, it’s 495x278mm.
I believe that your tray is pushed too far back in the machine. Open the top lid, open the front drop-down door and pull the tray forward until the legs seat down in the little dimples.
Thanks for the responses, I’ve just created a test rectangle with the dimensions of the area i need to cut. The focus height is set to the height of the material in question 3mm and this is what i see. There is no way in hell this machine will cut that area.
The height of the area in the UI is not far off but the shape is still nearly 10mm under what I’m supposedly about to cut? The width is fine for this cut.
The item in the pic is 270mm x 367mm so I’m really struggling to see how anyone could cut a piece of material with another 9mm on top of this. The solid grey bars stay as they are and if a cut line is outside the UI area it is greyed out.
Am I to take from this the only way is to remove the crumb tray?
You should be able to go all the way to the gray curtain at the bottom. Either your tray is not forward, as Jules suggested, or your camera is not calibrated. Did you run the calibration?
@stuchee I’m glad you were able to get your problem fixed.
I’m going to close this thread. If you run into any other trouble please either open a new thread or email us at support@glowforge.com and we’ll be happy to help!
if the cutting area is truly down that far, you could possibly remove the crumb tray and use something that doesn’t have a front lip to raise your material and also be able to position it correctly. There are a couple raiser designs on the forums, but those are usually for items that wouldn’t otherwise fit vertically on the tray.
, I’ve never actually noticed this before as I’ve never cut anything this large!