Glowforge pro printing double

[Auroling]

Glowforge owner of a few weeks and everything was going great until yesterday. Printed a few small items yesterday until it started to go wonky. The GF is now printing doubles laterally.

To troubleshoot, I printed out Gift of Good measure (scaled down to fit scrap), but you can clearly see it’s printing double and it cannot execute perfect circles. You can also see in the GFUI that the resulting cut is very far off from the virtual placement.

I gave tried following the maintenance and cleaning all mirrors and lenses. The machine has probably seen less than 15hrs of run time as I only get to tinker with it outside of work hours and proud owner for only 3-4 weeks.

Pictures for troubleshooting below:

Please help!

Edit: adjusted screenshot image for clarity

[rbtdanforth]

It would appear that there is slippage in one of the drive systems

[Auroling]

Thanks for the quick reply! Do you mind expanding on that? How/what should I adjust to fix a slipped drive? I hope it’s something I can fix myself, or would GF have to step in?

[Jules]

You can start by checking the tension in all three belts. (Instructions are below.)

Banding/resolution/lines not matching up?

Hello, thank you for letting us know about the trouble you’ve run into with your new Glowforge. To assist with troubleshooting, would you please check your X and Y axis belts for me to ensure they’re correctly tensioned? For the X axis belt (Located under the Laser Arm) Turn off your Glowforge. Carefully remove the crumb tray. Without removing the carriage plate and belt, locate the black pulley fastened by a metal screw on the right end of the laser arm. ​[image]​ Insert the short side of t…

(You can just check them first - see if they feel loose or you see any slack in them.)

[rbtdanforth]

@Auroling

Do you mind expanding on that? How/what should I adjust to fix a slipped drive?

How We Troubleshoot

more here

Gear and/or belt slippage?

Thank you for the detailed photos as well as the update on your test on Proofgrade material. I agree with @rbtdanforth; this is a very lovely design! When you re-ran your print on the original material using a slower cut speed, did you run one or two passes? Would you be able to provide a photo of the results using the slower cut speed? I reviewed the photos of the inside of your unit and didn’t see anything which looked out of place. One other thing to check would be the tension on the belt b…

I see @Jules has some of the same info but I hope this helps also.

[Auroling]

Omg thank you guys so much! It definitely was the issue and solution.

Here’s the test output:

[ivan1]

I’m so glad to see that the advice from our other community members got you back up and printing as expected. Thanks folks!

I’m going to close this thread - if the problem reoccurs, or if you run into any other trouble with your Glowforge, please post a new topic on the forum or reach out to us at support@glowforge.com and we’ll be happy to help.