Having another unusual recurring issue.
Adding artwork that should take 30 minutes to an hour to cut, but when I “Print” it tells me it will take 3 seconds. It takes almost a minute just to upload the art and it thinks it can produce it in 3 seconds?!
This is a 4x6 very “busy” piece with engraving and cuts on PG acrylic. Changing the settings manually did next to nothing regarding changing the time. It either added or subtracted a second.
Ths happens regardless of file type.
Suggestions?
What happens when you run the job?
It turns on for a few seconds and leaves a small mark before “finishing up” like normal.
Everything acts normal but for the actual engraving/cutting
Note the time of the attempts here, support can look at the logs. They might ask for the source file as well, if you own it and can share, post it here.
They will also likely ask that you print the “Gift of Good Measure” on Medium Draftboard, and post results here. It sounds like a file or processing issue, and that will help eliminate the machine itself as the issue.
So I take it you must have run the job previously (or a very similar one) to have an estimate of how long it should be, right?
When you load it into the GFUI, is any of the arwork showing grey? If so, it’s outside the print area, and the GF will only run the job on the parts of the job that show as separate steps in the left side bar IF they are all in the printable area. And I’m guessing that this is what is happening…
Since the speed updates, the printable areas have gotten smaller pending the settings (mainly speed) for a job.
Wow. Apparently that is the issue. Because the engraving overlapped the cutting I thought I could get away with having some of it end up in the grey area. Oddly nothing looked different regarding the lines/colors/layers/etc, and as soon as I hit print the grey border vanishes and shows the art over an inch away from the edges of the material.
It’s absolutely nuts how much waste this machine produces because it can’t see a whole PG sheet!
Thanks for tip
It could see the whole sheet - but as the laser can’t get to the edge it wouldn’t help anything. The laser can’t get to the edge because it hits the edge of the available space. If they’d made the case any larger they couldn’t have shipped it (without significantly increasing the cost etc.)
If you set your material to the bottom right of the machine you can get all the way to the edge of the sheet there - just don’t place your art in the upper left corner!
If the laser can’t get to within 1 1/4" from the edge of PG material then this is a flaw in either the machine design (as the material is within the hexed crumb tray) or with their decision to sell marked up materials that are too large for their machines to handle.
Given that the machine is always off by at least 1/4" (yes I’ve aligned, cleaned everything, etc) and can never cut in the same spot twice, I always make sure to place any art at least 1" away from the edges, which apparently is still not enough.
Regardless, now I know that if it creates an insanely short cut time to keep moving the art towards the center.
If your machine is off by more than 1/4" you have a warranty issue. Are you using set focus? When you say “I’ve aligned” does that mean you ran the Camera Calibration? I can place my art within 1/16" or less of the edge on the right and bottom edges, but not on the top because (as I said above) the laser head cannot physically reach those spots.
You will get about 1/4 inch off near the edges due to the fish eye lens on the camera but if you take that into account you can get very close to the edges. As for never cutting in the same spot twice … it should, if you haven’t moved your artwork or the piece. You can run an engrave for example and if it isn’t dark/deep enough run it again and it will be exactly in the same place.
That’s not the case on my end. If I attempt to do another run of the same art without touching anything it is quite a bit off. By up to 1/4"
Looks like I have some work ahead of me to get this thing tuned. Hopefully I don’t have a dud but am concerned with all the issues occurring including the printer head coming off the rails (yes the material was PG and flat at the time with no debris anywhere: I treat the GF like it’s made from crepe paper).
Thanks for the tips all; I’ll have to do some more tuning when time comes available!
It can easily and repeatedly get within about 1/2" of the edge of PG material on all sides. The actual work area is 11"x19.25".
The only “flaw” is that it’s subject to the laws of physics. 
The head needs room to decelerate before turning to go back the other way. No matter HOW big the bed was, you still couldn’t engrave all the way to each edge.
Ha! This has nothing to do with physics.
Also I’m not trying to engrave to the edge for two reasons: 1) the greyed out area would never let me and 2) I’m always at least 1/4" off set and therefore give myself at least 1/2" to the greyed out area which then equates to over an inch from the edges.
And again, if GF wanted you to cut close to the edges they would sell you slightly smaller sheets or make the crumb tray smaller/bed bigger/wider track for the head, so yes, it is a flaw if you can’t use the entire piece of material that they are selling.
Having said all that it sounds like with continued work and calibration etc I should be able to get within a reasonable distance of the edges as others have been able to do so.
And if we want to keep talking about the head, they could have gone with a more traditional design which creates a much smaller head, possibly with a “touch off sensor” like most maker/shaper/mills so that we didn’t have to buy calipers and manually enter in material thicknesses which also greatly reduces the bed area.
So yes, flaws.
Uh, you haven’t had to do that for a while! That’s what Set Focus is
Unfortunately Set Focus doesn’t work very well in the few instances I’ve tried it. Have yet to have a project turn out using that, but I do need to work on fine tuning everything apparently.
The greyed out area is the space required for the laser to stop and turn for another pass. The higher the speed, the bigger the grey area is.
Physics.
That is certainly not normal. Were you using material with an irregular surface or something that was smooth and consistent? Were they small pieces or were voids in the material where the auto focus in the head snapped rather than on the material? I’m sure curious as to what’s up with your machine.
Trying to see in your posts where you did the Camera Calibration. What were the results?
Haven’t used my calipers to get thickness for material focus since Auto Focus went live. You would still need to buy a calipers though for designing things to get the tabs and slots right. That’s why I bought mine.
The tube being on the gantry is quite a departure from traditional designs. From my understanding, not having to calibrate mirrors or get some type of story stick to get focus height but having a lens that auto focuses has worked out very well for the price of the machine.
Perhaps design and development constraints or trade offs. The usable bed size has been a moving target. Not as big as we expected, but it has gained in size. You can use the whole sheet of material efficiently. Perhaps not at all at once and you may have some margin to discard. And it shrinks with size and speed of engraving. I wasted more materials with the 12x24" from inventables than any of my proofgrade. Always had to make a decision as to how I was going to process it.
Both issues I’ve had to deal with on my other lasers. I drilled a hole into my thumb when aligning the mirrors on my other laser. You need to shoot the laser to check the position on a piece of tape you put on the mirror. See where it hits and adjust the mirror position. Keep doing that with many pieces of tape (or sticky notes) and in all 4 corners of the machine. After the first time you defeat the lid interlock so you don’t have to keep opening & closing the lid. When you do that it then becomes likely you’re going to put a body part in the path of the beam and hit the fire button without paying attention to what’s between the tube and the last mirror. In addition to drilling holes in your fingers, it’s also suitable for setting your clothes on fire 
The story stick for focus is nothing compared to the tribulations of beam alignment 
Yikes!!!