Draftboard not cutting all the way through

[mnemosyne]

This might be a stupid suggestion, but have you got some digital calipers and can you check your material thickness? I’m wondering if your draftboard is perhaps a little thicker than it is supposed to be.

[bwente]

I found that I can salvage those by sanding down from the backside. I used to try forcing it but it would just tear out.

[chroni]

I have calipers - but there’s a barcode on the sheet of wood. One of the expectations is that you buy this wood, and it works. The fact that I have to figure out the “right” settings on my own and burn through material - I find that problematic.

[mnemosyne]

I totally hear you and agree. I have heard of a couple boards being thicker than spec - I am hoping that it’s your proofgrade out of spec and not your laser.

Also - since it is proofgrade I believe you can ask support to replace.

[wilsonpf]

@chroni

I was going to run it through again - but you can’t tell it hasn’t cut through without moving the board. Moving the board loses all sense of alignment.

I place magnets on the crumb tray butted up against the material on three sides of the material so that I can get the material back into place exactly where it was.

[jamesdhatch]

@chroni

I was going to run it through again - but you can’t tell it hasn’t cut through without moving the board.

I pin the board or put magnets to hold it firmly in place. Then I use a pointy tool (dental pick) after it runs the job to see if I can lift just the cutout piece. If I can I pull it out and then pull off the magnets and remove the rest of the sheet. If I can’t remove it with the pick I set everything but the cuts to ignore and run another pass. The material won’t move when it’s held in place with the magnets so the second cut pass lands dead on top of the first.

But as you said you shouldn’t need to do this so I’d toss in a problem report to see if they might need to tweak your machine’s power profile.

[chroni]

I think this is an good solution… but you shouldn’t have to do that much work. Maybe my expectations are too high…

[techyg]

@wilsonpf

magnets

Can you guys share what magnets you are using (ideally on Amazon)? I have several but none of them seem big enough. I did find this one in another thread that looks kind of interesting.

3D Printed Neodymium Magnet Material Hold Down

I have been using magnets to hold down my various materials since I got the . There are plenty of topics from users who came up with solutions for this, and in addition to magnets, I’m a huge fan of the honeycomb bed hold down pins. Examples: New Material Holder Magnet Management Honeycomb Bed Hold Down Pins Simple Material Holder I had been covering my magnets with tape so that I had something to grab onto to pull off, but sometimes the magnets snapped to each other making it di…

[pubultrastar]

# CMS Powerful Disc Magnets Rare Earth Neodymium magnets At 1.26" X 1/8 Th" 6 Pack

[techyg]

Thanks, just ordered.

[jaz]

I’m so sorry about your print and the delay in my response.

I’ve extracted the logs from your Glowforge to investigate the issue, and I noticed the material height your Glowforge measured was much higher than the normal height for this material. To look into this, can you check a few things?

1. Please double check to ensure your Draftboard isn’t warped by laying your material on a flat surface (the Crumb Tray can work) and pressing down on different parts of the material. If you’re able to press the material down further in some spots, the material is warped and likely caused the cut through issues. If you haven’t already, you can read more about warp and how to avoid it here.
2. If your material is completely flat without any warp, please measure your material with a pair of precision calipers (or another precise measuring tool) if you have them, and send me the values you record. Be sure to remove the protective layer on both sides before measuring.

[chroni]

I will try and get to this tonight

[stephen4]

@chroni - just checking in. Were you ever able to try the steps @jaz suggested?

[chroni]

Crap. I will do this tonight. Please leave this open. Apologies.

[chroni]

@stephen4 Apologies. I haven’t gotten to the test described above. Close the thread if you need to but… - I intend to still do the tests, but I haven’t been able to get to it. Cutting too much leather… and selling stuff.

[zandr]

I’m seeing the same thing here. (Just ran a print a few minutes ago: 2018-10-22 19:40 UTC or so) It’s very close to cutting through, but it doesn’t cut the backing paper, and there’s a little tearing of the bottom surface of the draftboard. I’ll double check for warping when I run the next cut, but I didn’t notice anything.

Edit: Material is 3.3mm thick after the masking is removed.

[zandr]

A thorough cleaning (including the mirror) and it’s closer, but it’s still not going through the backing, and I still had one rough edge on the back.

[geek2nurse]

You’ll want to open your own thread in Problems and Support for them to address your issue–there’s only one support ticket per thread.

That said, make sure your material is held down flat against the crumb tray; even a tiny bit of warp will affect your cuts that way.

[vee]

That sounds like the best reason for any delay, @chroni ! Thanks for keeping us updated. I’ll go ahead and close this thread now, and if you follow up with us by sending an email to support@glowforge.com when you get the chance to run the tests, just reference this thread so we can pick up where we left off.

@zandr, I’m sorry you’re running into trouble. As @geek2nurse said, we try to keep topics to one issue or report per thread. Could you please start a new thread if you’re still having trouble? Thank you!