I originally bought it because at the time, my business often required me to create custom mounting plates for lightweight electronics. Acrylic is perfect for that.
But, given the unexpected wait time with the preorder, (I shoulda known) I ended up paying someone with an “industrial” laser cutter to do all that stuff. In total all those custom mounting plates cost more than I paid for the glowforge and air filter.
By the time I got it, the engineering need was over, but I figured I’d be better off selling it than taking a refund. (Turned out to be true – Preorder prices were super low!) I never got around to selling it though.
So it wasn’t supposed to be fun. But my daughter likes projects and this is something we can do together. So, if fun it must be, then fun it shall be. Its name is Georgie Forgie.
Glad you got it up and running. I used mine to make a backing plate to mount a rPi early on, no idea what happened to it. I was working on a stand-alone solution to running my X-Carve CNC (which requires connection to a computer…)
YAY! Glad you both had the skills to fix what was broken, and didn’t have anything broken that you couldn’t repair
If you run the Camera Calibration you may find significuant improvement in being able to place (and re-place) items on your cutting bed.
I’m trying to remember all the truly important things that have changed over the past 5 years, there have been so many updates since 2017! This might be worth scrolling through (newest ones are first):
Perhaps that explains how I “ruined” my daughter’s iPhone 11.
She wanted a couple sanrio (anime) characters etched on the back of her phone, and she provided the graphic. The iPhone 11 has a tempered glass back. So of course, I first tested on a separate pieces of scrap tempered glass, (screen protectors, plus the front of an obsolete phone I had.) It worked well and looked good, so I thought I was ready.
I ran it through, with one pass. But before removing the phone from the bed, I saw that it didn’t quite look as prominent as the pieces in my tests. I figured it was more stubborn type of glass, so doing it again, not increasing the power but giving it 3 passes, would improve it.
Since I hadn’t moved the phone, it should align perfectly, right? Nope.
Not only did it “miss”, but each of the 3 passes in the second run were etched in a different place.
See the photo. My daughter was nice about it, but sad and I felt guilty. The phone works fine and she has a case which covers this, but still a bummer.
Is this just a matter of camera calibration? Even if so, why would it move so much in each of 3 passes in the same run?
That’s not a camera issue, that’s mechanical. With the machine off move the camera back and forth and the bar back and forth and see if you can find out what it’s snagging on. If you don’t feel anything, look at your belts and see if one is loose…
For your daughter’s phone I’d see if you can find an image of the same character in motion and then the “failures” are motion lines!
It’s really weird that a mechanical issue would “move” between passes in the same run, but not during the pass itself. Each of the etched images is shaped perfectly, but moved.
I’ll look into this later. Maybe I’ll do some tests with cardboard to see if I can get consistent results.
Once the setup is done when you turn the machine on, the machine assumes that the placement does not change relative to the drive bands. If the bands slip for any reason the placement will be different than the machine thinks it is.
