Glow forge only engraves my images when i shrink them to be small, NEED help this has been for years

[michael14]

Glow forge only engraves my images when i shrink them to be small, NEED help this has been for years.

it says its printing and it acts like it is but nothings is being engraved

[dklgood]

Welcome to the forum.

If your file includes (by accident) two designs stacked on top of one another, the machine will go through the motions but not engrave. As for engraving small images, the size of the usable area of the Glowforge is limited for engraved items based on your speed settings. The printhead must have room to speed up and slow down at the beginning and end of every engraved line which reduces the size of the engraveable area.

[eflyguy]

Note that ignoring overlapping shapes only applies to vector engraving, not raster/bitmap.

From your description, it sounds like your design is simply too large to fit into the printable areas (which is significantly smaller than the print bed/crumb tray.)

[chris1]

Have you contacted Glowforge support? No offense, but nobody here is going to be able to help you with the complete lack of information you’ve provided.

[jamesdhatch]

@michael14

Glow forge only engraves my images when i shrink them to be small

The engraveable area changes based on your settings - higher speeds result in smaller available engrave sizes. That’s because the head needs more room to decelerate before starting the next line. The faster you go, the more room needed to slow down.

So oftentimes a design that’s too big to engrave at a set speed will engrave if you shrink the size (or slow it down).

If I’m understanding your problem correctly, that may be the cause.

But if it goes through the motions & doesn’t engrave there are a variety of other possible issues including setting the power to 1 or overlaid copies as has been suggested here.