I just received my glowforge pro today and when doing my sample gift of good measure item it didn’t cut all the way through. I tried several times to no avail. Also, tried the gift tag and it didn’t cut through and also that is when i noticed the right side wasn’t cutting. Cleaned all the lens and problem didn’t get better and anything moving towards the right side of the tray didn’t mark the material at all. When inspecting the lens/mirrors i can see some sort of crack or discrepancy on the printer head window on the left side of the printer head. I tried to capture it in the photo below. Also, provided additional photos per the other threads i read while investigating. The last photo shows the attemps. Bottom left is very first run. 2nd from Bottom left is 2nd attempt. Gift Tag is third attempt. Above gift tag is 4th attempt only with cut paths turned on, and 3rd from the bottom left is the final attempt after cleaning and inspecting everything with only cut paths. You can see it barely marked the material.
I’m not GF support, just another owner, but I have a possible explanation for you.
The laser tube produces an (invisible to our eyes) beam of infrared light that comes out the left side, bounces off some hidden mirrors inside the arm, comes out the silver window you photographed, then enters the black window on the side of your print head, where it strikes a final mirror inside to point directly down at your material to do the cutting/engraving.
It looks to me like the laser beam is not coming out of the laser arm window parallel to the laser arm. It’s pointing upwards a bit.
When the print head is towards the left side of the machine, the laser beam enters the window on it near the top (where that stress crack formed from the heat) rather than through the middle. It looks like you can see discoloration of the window near the crack as well.
As the print head moves further to the right, less and less of the beam is going through the window, and more of it is striking the edge of the window and the side of the print head instead. When the print head moves far enough to the right, the laser beam is hitting it too high up to enter the window at all, so none of it hits the mirror inside, and none of it reaches your material. This is why the cut lines fade out as you move to the right.
Unfortunately if my theory is correct, it means the tube or a mirror inside the arm are misaligned, and there’s no user access to that to fix it yourself. It’d have to be repaired/replaced by Glowforge.
My guess is it got thrown around a bit too hard during shipping and knocked the mirrors that we cannot access out of alignment. Pretty sure you will have to return this machine for replacement. Support will get back to you via this thread. They will probably want pictures of all of the cable connections as well as pictures of the pins on the white cable where it connects to the laser head to verify that none of them are bent. They will also probably want a picture of the circuit board showing where the cables plug into it under the left side glass. Kind of hard to see but sticking your cell phone in there you can get a good picture.
Thanks @dan84 and @wilsonpf. I’m afraid you are both probably right. I’ll add some more pictures for when support gets around to helping me out to speed up the process. Disappointing for sure to spend over $6k on a paper weight. Hopefully they can get this resolved quickly!
Hello! @mmetz23 I apologize for the delay in response. I noticed you opened an email ticket as well. I currently have all the information I need to move forward with the next steps. I just need to review this case with my specialists. You will be receiving another email from me detailing the next steps. I will also keep this thread open until I send out that email for you. I appreciate your continued patience and understanding. Thank you!
Hello! @mmetz23 I went ahead and send back a reply to that email ticket you posted. I look forward to hearing back from you on there. I will go ahead and close this ticket to mitigate any further confusion. Thank you for reaching out!