Hi All–
We’re making progress learning to use our GF Pro. We’ve purchased a business, and what we mostly bought are the plans that the former owner made over 20 year for laser-cut wood kits of structures for model railroads. So the parts are pretty tiny.
We’ve been having a problem with pinholing and scorching (especially on thin stock–like, 1/64" plywood thin stock O_o ), and the forums have been incredibly helpful as we’ve figured things out. Slowing speed and lowering power have nearly solved our pinhole problem.
The remaining issue has something to do with our legacy plans, which have traveled a tortured path:
- Originally drawn in Designer over the last 20 years (Designer was discontinued ages ago and won’t run on anything newer than Windows XP)
- Exported from Designer into .drw format, which at least Corel Draw can read
- Opened in Draw and exported as .svg files, which Glowforge can use
Something about that process seems to have caused some weirdness that I can’t figure out. The .svg files from Corel Draw open and run just fine in GF… but then GF makes two or three passes over some (not all) of the line segments.
To make sure my eyes weren’t tricking me, I burned a small test drawing from the original plans, then drew a similar figure by hand, exported it as an .svg, and burned it alongside the original using the same power and speed settings on the same piece of material. Then I watched the burn process carefully, and sure enough: the GF passed over some segments in the original plan twice and all segments in my new plan just once. The result of the unwanted multiple passes is some nasty scorching. See the side-by-side results (original plan sample on the right; my hand-drawn test on the left):
I’ve attached both plans here. The original is called “test_sheet.svg” and my hand-drawn example is called “test_sheet-mine.svg.” I’d be most grateful for any help y’all can offer figuring out what’s amiss with the .svg generated from the original plans (“test_sheet.svg”)! Note that the weight of the lines in both files is .001, so yes: it’s hard to see and you’ll want to bump up the weight to .25 or something if you want to take a look.
testsheets.zip (5.2 KB)