Endless Calibrating, Laser hitting rear wall over and over

Community Support
1

Just turned on my Glowforge today and the machine went into the calibration routine and I thought everything was normal. So I sat down to upload a file to laser cut and I hear the stepper motor moving the laser back to the rear wall every 10 seconds. I powered the machine off several times already, left the web site and came back, restarted my computer, but the Glowforge is still listed as calibrating and the laser keeps impacting the rear wall of the machine every 10 seconds.

Is this normal?

2

Nope. Not normal.

You can try resetting by holding down the Print Start button until it turns teal (about ten seconds), then turn the machine off, center the head underneath the lid camera (slowly), and turn the machine back on.

Then wait until it runs through the whole calibration routine and the head returns to the upper lefthand corner before opening the app and loading a file. (Even if it takes several minutes.) Make sure you don’t have the app open on several devices simultaneously.

If none of that works, turn the machine off and unplug it for a couple of minutes, then do it again.
If two attempts doesn’t work, just wait to hear from Support.

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3

Cool! I went through the steps you suggested and it may have worked. The machine seem to have calibrated to the center, moved to the left, then back to the left hand corner. No mysterious inching backward every 10 seconds like it was doing.

The app.glowforge.com says the machine is “ready” too. So I guess all is good again.

Thank you for your help!

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4

Why? This accomplishes absolutely nothing.

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5

Glad to hear it. :grinning:

6

If you find yourself in this predicament again, you can skip the “holding down the button until it turns teal, and then power it off” step.

That just puts the device into WiFi set up mode, then accomplishes nothing because the device the was turned off before anything happened. (I don’t know why this advice persists)

What is actually happening is the the cloud is confused about where the head is located, so it repeatedly sends commands to move the head to a place it shouldn’t go (banging up against the back, in your case).

If you power off the machine (without the teal thingy step), and gently move the head under the lid camera, it makes it really easy for the cloud to locate the head.

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If this problem happens again, I’ll jump to moving the laser head under the camera step. All I want is just for the thing to work :slight_smile:

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8

I marked my gantry with a sharpie to help me reliably get the head directly under the camera. Startup calibration is way better than it was, but I find starting it up with the head already under the camera reduces startup calibration time.

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Thanks for the answer @scott.wiederhold, that’s right. I’m glad to hear you’re back up and printing, @janebynoe!

If your Glowforge has trouble calibrating again, please:

  1. Turn off your Glowforge (this is important to avoid damage to your unit)
  2. Open the lid and, using both hands, gently move the laser arm to the center of the bed
  3. Gently move the head under the lid camera
  4. Turn your Glowforge back on

Thanks for letting us know about this!

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