Hello. I am experiencing the same as issue from 2 weeks ago. Stuck on centering. I have done the following:
Clean the top of the printhead. Clean the lid camera. With the machine off, position the printhead Glowforge logo directly under the lid camera. Turn the Glowforge back on. Might work.
Just re-read your post, so maybe you tried this when you said lens moved to camera line. Sorry if I missed that.
I will try your guidance again.
That worked! Thank you. Since i had already cleaned the lenses and mirror, I moved the printhead directly under the lid camera. Why did that correct the problem?
During the centering process the printhead moves to this position. Sometimes starting the printhead there manually helps the software “find” the printhead. Make sure you have the machine off any time that you manually move the printhead.
Thank you for assisting me!
Mine was doing that a few days ago. So I cleaned the lid camera, and put the head close enough to “see” it. If in starting up the head is far enough to the right, the camera thinks it needs to go further right and eventually smashes in to the right side possibly causing damage. By watching the first few moments you can catch it starting to do this and put a stop to it. Over several years It has done this maybe 5 times, and usually the lid camera is dirty.
That would happen with higher frequency when the machines were new. I got in the habit of placing the head under the camera before I turned it on to prevent it. It might save 10-20 seconds of the machine trying to locate the head.
There is a conversation between the machine and the servers during that process. The laser takes a picture of the bed and sends it to the server. the server responds with instructions to move the head and the laser takes another picture and sends it. this continues until the logo on the head is directly under the camera. Then the server is sure of the head position and will present itself as ready.
The machine doesn’t have any limit switches normally found on CNC machines, it knows the size of the bed, and now where the head is so then it knows the travel limits.
I got my machine in 2017 and never had to move the head manually under the camera.
A machine with clean optics should have no issue locating and centering the head.
I’ve had to do it a handful of times but never directly after having just done it. An issue can be if the head doesn’t end up in the position the servers expect it to be at at power off.
I have never had to position the head under the camera , however where I think the Glowforge struggles many times after turning the machine off is getting back on the server. I sometimes would get tricked into thinking the glowforge was on line when it really was not.
There is this Ticking sound the Glowforge can make letting me know were attempting to connect to the server an than there are times when the Head makes a run for it and smashes into the side letting me know its not really on the server .
Something to consider after all the cleaning routines.
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