Engrave on one side of GF cleaner/darker than on the other?

[Nyxiom]

As titled. My GF pro engraves more cleanly and dark on the left side of the bed and as it gets closer to the right the quality and darkness of the engrave degrades rather significantly… Anyone else experience this? Ideas?

[jbmanning5]

Within the same print run? Different print runs on opposite sides of the bed? (If you place it on the left, it’s different than on the right). How many times has it happened? Same piece of material or different materials?

[Nyxiom]

Same print run, happens on different materials but I notice it the most on leather. On the left side engraves look nice and crisp, on the right, faded. I can see if I can get a picture when I get home.

[Nyxiom]

Here is an example. All these lines are the same (aside from thickness) and engraved in the same print at identical settings. They are pretty close to the edge of the printable area though, so perhaps that’s it. Just not sure if this is normal or not.

[jbmanning5]

I can see a lot of bending on the edge (that looks to not be camera distortion). Is your leather laying perfectly flat? At low power, anything above or below where it oughta be really is impacted.

I “engrave” a lot of muslin cotton bags at low power (7) - if I don’t get it secured perfectly flat without ripples, the engrave fades away pretty quick.

[Jules]

Try some of the honeycomb pins to make sure the material is completely flattened…I swear, I don’t know how I got decent results before them. I’ve noticed that even materials that I thought were flat could be tacked down a bit with those pins…I’m using them for everything now and getting great results every time.

Honeycomb bed holdown pins

the best laser results are achieved with flat (non warping materials) in order to maintain consistent focus. Also, when cutting light materials like paper, the exhaust turbulence can kick up the material and ruin your job or at worst… catch fire. (speaking of which, I hope you all keep a small fire extinguisher in easy reach, near your machine - safety FIRST) I hope you find these useful. I used to 3d print them for my other laser cutter but occasionally , they would see the wrath of the laser …

[Nyxiom]

Thanks, I’ll try with the pins and see how that turns out, hopefully it’s just an issue with things not being flat enough.

[jaz]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

@Nyxiom If flattening the material doesn’t help, I have a test you can try. We included an extra piece of Draftboard in your materials shipment for troubleshooting. Could you print the Gift of Good Measure on Draftboard using the Draftboard settings and let me know how it goes?

[vee]

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.