How often are you guys having to do recalibration?

I have to get into the habit of using the precision placement box more. Do you find that the camera based machine homing method repeats with very high accuracy? Makes me want to do some testing now.
If the “homing” does repeat say within .015" then one could do very reliable positioning after a cold start. One item to consider is the fact that the crumb tray has some X-Y free play (mine does anyway). Maybe it can be registered more accurately than the location the dimples provide. Probably pretty simple actually. I’ve drilled a few holes into the base of my machine already. :innocent:

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I think @timjedwards put up a design in the free area that narrows the range of movement of the tray. My main interest is over a consecutive engrave/cuts where that is not an issue.

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And actually, I have found that a level table is important. If the table surface isn’t level, sometimes the gantry moves after I square it up before turning the machine on. Make sure the table doesn’t rock, either.

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Yes, level is better. It is a machine tool; they are always leveled - it is part of the setup.

Regarding calibration, I would box mine up weekly (or even more often) , then unpack it and just start cutting and almost never recalibrated.

From what I can tell on the latest pictures, I’m on my phone so it’s tough, but it looks like it’s within 1/8”, which would be within spec.

One thing to note, the calibration is calibrating to a horizontal plane. Anything above or below that plane where set focus is used, will appear to be off. So if the material is warped at all, that will cause things to be at different horizontal planes, thus appearing off in the camera.

Set Focus measures at the specific place you tell it to. I would use Set Focus first always, rather than not doing so. It will still autofocus without using set focus, but you may notice that the design “jumps” a little bit when you go to hit print. This is because when it does the autofocus scan, it’s reading a different measurement than is expected (which can be a few different things) and is updating the bed image and how it’s dewarped for placement.

It seems you also have a few things going on, with the cooling down, head bumped, etc.

The cooling down - if it gets hot, it will pause the job and then pick back up when it’s cool enough, but this doesn’t stop the job timer in the app (or, if you hit pause, the timer will keep counting down).

The head bump could be a sensor issue, or it could be an actual obstruction somewhere it’s hitting causing the accelerometer to jostle unexpectedly.

If you are getting the head bump thing, it’s possible that it is hitting something, and the head is losing track of where it is, which will cause your alignment to be off. If the head is ever moved to a different position while the power is on, and it’s not told to move like that, it will lose track of the calibration/where the head is, until the next reboot. For example, if you move the head manually an inch by hand to clean it, your next cuts will be off that much (or could be worse, it goes to the boundaries and loses even more steps).

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May I ask, what is the purpose of reboxing it every week?

The latest pictures are definitely better alignment. However, with the prints, they were still not cutting properly. There are “cut” parts (e.g. the circles) that didn’t make it through the print. So, I think something is still wrong.

I always do Set Focus prior to printing, and thus far, all my prints have been on flat PG material.

I’m not sure if you saw the photos with the bat symbols. Do you know why the alignment would be good (well, reasonable) in some parts and then completely off in others? The cuts were definitely supposed to be separate entities. Yet, it cut into each other in multiple places. Could that be because I am importing different images into the app as opposed to having just one files from an external source? I mean, the software is still in beta, so could it be a glitch?

Oh, maybe that might be part of the problem? The table that it is sitting on is level, but it is a plastic folding table that one might use for picnics. I should perhaps get something more sturdy? It’s also on carpet… not sure if that makes a difference. It doesn’t visibly move or rock during the process, but maybe the stability is so sensitive that it’s affecting the alignment?

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Awesome, thank you! I’ll look into this :smiley:

@gewubs I’m going to have to look into this further. You’re speaking a different language at the moment :wink:

@jbmanning5 was our “on the road” Glowforger, until just recently when he got all famous and had to put down roots so he could meet his market demand. :slight_smile: He lived in an RV, so when he was driving the GF was boxed up, and when he’d stop, he’d unbox it again. :slight_smile:

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Nope. You can import multiple images; the UI handles that fine.

@brokendrum do you have the file for that test? Thanks!

@geek2nurse, hmm, so something is definitely not normal then?

Ah, my weirdness seems to happen even in the middle of the plane. :frowning:

My guess is either a hardware issue or something environmental that’s bumping the head out of alignment (wiggly table could maybe do it…). It will be interesting to see what Support says!

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I should qualify that – it happened all over the board, but it started when the head had to travel over into the right-most section. If there was nothing to make it go over there, everything cut fine.

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I’ll need to get into a habit of this - now that I know it’s a thing. Thank you!

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Oh, interesting. And, that was the machine you had replaced?

One of them, yeah. :slight_smile:

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