Like many of you I had a hard time focusing the lens, and got an extra wide kerf that wouldn’t cut through the material. For me, none of the standard advice worked. My solution is very unorthodox and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve tried everything else and are desperate like I was.
Assuming your lens is not upside-down, if you have accidentally pushed/slid the motorized holder for your lens either up or down too many times in one direction, then you can (when the machine is off) take the lens out, and push it back in the opposite direction you have been accidentally pushing it. Then fire up the GF. If you do this several times, it would seem to put the readable height of the lens back into a window that the software recognizes. You’ll know if it has worked because the “set-focus” function in online software will start working again without giving you - the material is the wrong size message. Make sure to read updates below
I got the idea because I was talking to the support staff, who noticed that the height numbers on my lens changed once when the machine was off (they were looking at the logs). They didn’t know I moved the lens-holder manually to see if maybe that would fix the issue. Then I realized that I had been moving it up too much in general. The staff told me that I had to send in my machine so that they could manually calibrate the lens position with their software, which isn’t available as an over-the-air service.
Anyway, if someone sees a flaw in this logic, please let me know. I will delete this post if it can cause other issues for people. Also, please do not try this if you have never moved the lens manually. As for me, my machine is up and running perfectly again.
Update: Support is now saying that, even though I might have gotten my machine to work, at some point it will probably stop working again because the calibration needed is more sophisticated than just moving the lens. Also, there is a possibility that the lens movement mechanism is very fragile. It doesn’t appear to be so, but there could be sensitive switches attached, or other sensitive parts. To be clear, support has made no mention of this, just the commentors below. I will leave this post up in case it keeps yielding useful insights into how the GF works. I no longer recommend anyone trying this until certain answers are given about calibration and lens movement sensitivities.
Update 2: It would seem as if moving the lens should have no affect on lens calibration for nearly everyone. The lens returns to a base-state using magnets each time the GF starts. If my machine is not doing that, hence the need for manual correction, then there is clearly some other problem that is messing with its regular return to position 0. Also, after looking at all the parts and descriptions, it doesn’t appear as if the lens carrier is very sensitive. With that said, it still makes sense to be careful with it. Most likely my machine will stop working properly again at some point. I’ll have to decide whether to continue manually adjusting it for forever, or to send it in. Good luck to the rest of you with focus issues.