Design printing "off center"

[polarpresence]

Good Afternoon. We are starting to use our Glowforge more and more, and we are running in to an issue. The issue is this. We center our design on the wood in the app but when we print it , it is terrible off center. In the app is looks perfectly centered, but when it starts printing is is at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches to the right of center. Not sure why, or what to do about it. Any suggestions are most welcomed.

Thanks in advance!

Lisa Stoneking

[rpegg]

Up to 1/4" off center is not unusual at this time. The company has stated this should improve through S/W updates.

The error you have reported is usually caused by not entering the correct material height value. This is needed to dewarp the fisheye lens image from the lid camera. An exact height above the crumb tray honeycomb is needed for proper image alignment.

Also, the material height entered can be no larger than 0.5"

[polarpresence]

We have the crumb tray out using the pass thru. I should have stated that. But guessing the same info would apply?

[geek2nurse]

Hi Lisa!

When you are looking at the app, you’re seeing the printable area of the wood, which is actually not centered on the wood itself. I’m thinking that’s what is causing your issue.

If you put a piece of 12" x 20" cardboard and bring in a simple rectangular shape to cut, you can use it to cut out the whole cutting area (might take more than one cut, since it probably won’t have the exact proportions needed). Then you’ll have a cardboard template that shows you where your cutting area is, and you can use that to tell you how to place things that you want to center on a full sheet of material.

[rpegg]

Hoping someone will point you to a tutorial. If you have the crumb tray out then the top surface of the material needs to be elevated. You want it between 0 and 1/2" above the original crumb tray height. For example if you have a 1" piece of wood you will need to raise the material with spacers to get it up to the correct level. The crumb tray honeycomb is usually 1.38" high. That’s the zero point. So if you raised it 0.5" additional the correct material height to be entered would be 1.0"+0.5"-1.38" or 0.12".

Yeah, I know, it’s math. But pretty easy once you visualize it.

[Jules]

Yep…we have some tutorials for using the machine without the tray:

Tutorial: How to cut without the Crumb Tray (Honeycomb)

Tutorial: How to cut objects too thick to have the honeycomb in place The GlowForge has a maximum material thickness it can cut through, but there is a maximum thickness you can even put on the honeycomb (crumb tray) even if you are surface engraving as the laser has a limited focus range of 0.01" - 0.4" *** above the surface of the honeycomb at the time of this tutorial. But let’s say you wanted to engrave something thicker that fits quite nicely inside the GlowForge but not with the crumb tray…

Cutting Without the Crumb Tray - The NO MATH Edition

There’s a great tutorial here on cutting without the crumb tray when you want to work with thicker material. If you want to know the numbers and theory behind it, go read that first, and then come back. Thank you, @henryhbk! This method uses the digital calipers you should already have, and the not-used-often-enough ZERO button. We’re going to go through the steps from the tutorial above, but without any math or writing down numbers. The first step is to find the height of your crumb tray’s su…

Publish or Perish D6 Die

These were sourced on Amazon: http://a.co/ceqOmch I specifically went with the 25mm (1 inch) dice for increased visability and “real estate” for engraving. They are cheaper in bulk, but as this was an initial test for a limited run, I thought it was a reasonable deal. Btw, since these are > 0.5", the crumb tray must be removed, so there’s a bit of math needed to get the engraving face back into the focus zone as well as setting the exact focus distance. It took a few ceramic tiles I had hand…

Tray Removed - Calculator - Updated

After seeing a couple of people talking about the correct way to do this I made a calculator to simplify the process and hopefully demonstrate the goal. All you need to do is add the height of your object and the base you want to use and it will tell you if it will work or not and the setting to use in the GF, if it won’t work it will tell you why. If you don’t have a base in mind just put 0 and it will give you the minimum needed. [image] Zip file TrayCalculator3.xlsx (33.8 KB) Dropbox in…

[polarpresence]

Thank you all for this information. Now to re read and and achieve!!

Lisa

[jbmanning5]

You’ll do great with that attitude. Post up in #glowforge-project-examples when you’re done!

[polarpresence]

will do!

Lisa

[jaz]

Thank you for linking the tutorials @Jules !

@polarpresence
I’m sorry you ran into trouble here.

I hope the tutorials help!

I’m going to close this topic. If you continue to see very large alignment error on your prints, please post a new topic and I’ll continue investigating right away.