I ordered my Pro about nine months ago. In that time, I’ve had the unit replaced twice for “lid open” errors, and another time had to replace the lid cable because it was bad. I received my second replacement unit about two weeks ago, and it doesn’t cut square. The laser arm is not square with the rails.
I’ve tried the fixes on the support site, and have contacted support three or four times. Current status? Still working on it.
We are able to cut, but I use jigs for printing on the pieces we cut out using a UV flatbed printer. With this problem, none of the pieces fit in the printer jigs. And since some pieces are more out of square than others based on where they are on the bed, cutting new jigs doesn’t work either.
Support: if you are reading this, please help. I am still under warranty, but keep getting the reply in chat: “senior associates are still currently investigating the issue.”
Feels like they are slow walking me to the end of my warranty.
As long as you reported within your warranty, you’re under warranty. Their CS is really excellent, but they don’t spend a lot of time touching back to say “we’re working on it”. It’s still a small shop (comparatively) so they spend their time trying to figure out what the issue is. I imagine with this they’re attempting to figure out a way to fix this without you having to ship back your entire machine (again!). They’re getting better with a lot of things, but this is extra special.
Opening new P&S threads, and new chats, open new tickets which have to be compared, combined, and closed - so really does slow down the process - and as they’re clearly already talking with you privately they will close the public ones first (this one) and continue working with you in the background.
It’s frustrating to “have faith” :-/
Just out of curiosity - did you check the square on the prior ones? Cuz people here were getting lid open issues when it turned out their tables/floors weren’t flat…and not-square can happen for the same reason (experience with construction - not that I’ve had that particular issue with my GF). I’m curious if you’ve checked balance on your table top.
If the gantry is not square to the rails, fix it by holding one side still and, gently, with the power off, adjusting the other until it is square. You may need to check this periodically. Once your GF is flat your gantry should stay square unless you push it to stops, in which case you should square it again.
Thanks Ben. Tried that. It just returns each time to an “off-square” default that we cannot correct. I have tried all the trouble shooting tips and none work.
Deidrebeth: the machine is level. I did not check the others to see if they were square per se, but when we cut out our postcards and frames on the previous two machines, they fit the jigs perfectly. Also, we produce a photo frame that requires two identical rectangles be glued up together. On previous machines, those two rectangles were a perfect match. On this new machine they are off by about 1/2mm on opposing corners. It makes the frames look imperfect.
It took a lot of fiddling to get mine square, but that is what ended up working for me. The machine MUST be off.
Also, the machine does not need to be perfectly level, it needs to be perfectly flat. Level and flat are not the same, and a small error in flatness will cause some pretty big errors in alignment with the lid camera. I had to shim one corner of mine because my table, while level per every measurement I could make, was not flat.
Good luck!
Oh, you would notice it. It’s a kind of loud thump when the stepper motors slip. (When the head is almost home.)
Reason I asked is there is a situation that can happen where a cable gets stretched underneath the laser arm, and if that hangs up on the fins of the heat sink, it can pop your laser arm slightly out of skew each time it homes. (There is a way to fix it, if that’s what the problem is. The thing I honed in on was the statement you made that it keeps popping out of alignment after you’ve fixed it.)
But that might not be the issue. You might want to watch it the next time it homes…sometimes you can actually see it catch and rebound just a little. It will bounce on the right side.
I do recall that someone had a cable fall to low and catch on a part as it moved by. They merely had to lift the cables to be out of the way. I am on my tablet so cannot easily go looking.
The problem I had happened when the scoop for the head fan hit a pin that was just a bit high and threw the gantry catywumpus that took me a while to find.
With the Glowforge turned off I pushed the gantry all the way to the back and by pressing each side made it parallel to the back then the head was eased to the far left before turning the machine back on.
After that I do this after every time I clean the machine to make sure that it remains square.
