How often are you guys having to do recalibration?

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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Is this what you consider a foreign language? Many people who do not need to use concise terms are puzzled by them, or dismiss them as a form of snobbery :grinning:. And that can be the case…
Not snobbery:
By “flat” we mean planar, that is not warped or twisted. By level we imply a plane which is horizontal. If you placed a marble in any spot on a level plane it would not roll in any direction due to gravity.
If you place your Glowforge on a warped surface, the case would tend to also twist. This messes up all the alignments of rails, crumbtray and laser arm. The machine will probably still work, but its performance may suffer.
If the Glowforge is placed on a non level plane surface, it will probably function very well. The motors would need to work a bit harder in one direction than the other. Deflections could occur due to gravity. If that surface was reasonably close to level you would never notice.

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It is against the rules to ask for files. 200 whacks with a splintered ruler !!

Whew. That warning just saved you from the wrath of the machine.

(disclaimer: this is a joke. It does not resemble any sort of reality in this world or yours. Release the sharp pencils and stand down.)

Here you go. The scrap you put it on does not have to move much for test, and make sure it is big enough that the red dot will strike it.

Not totally convinced that red dot blink makes a difference since I seldom see it 40 foot away, but it is what I do, so…

calib.zip (769 Bytes)

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LOL, oh my gosh. This was hilarious and perfectly timed since I am reading this upon getting up from a nap. Scared the crap out of me for a second :smiley:

Thank you, kind gent!

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Hey, @gewubs, this was the foreign language that I was talking about. LOL. I feel stupid after reading it because I have nooooo idea what this means.

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Speaking of this, do you know if there’s a dramatic difference in carpet versus hardwood flooring for placement? I am thinking that I may need to invest in a sturdier bench. Mine is a Costco plastic folding table that’s usually used for potlucks. They have metal legs, but still might be part of the issue.

I will be looking into new tables this week, but I think the last time I checked with my level tool (does this have a name?), it was level. LOL. Thanks for assisting in my noob-ity.

Well don’t feel stupid please. I will explain.

When you start up a computer controlled machine it needs to be initialized. The machine is not aware of the position of the moving parts. Virtually all Computer Numerical Control machines run a “Homing” cycle when they start. This is usually a predefined set of movements at low speed toward a “home” position. The machine knows that home for an axis has been reached when a switch for that purpose is triggered. Once all the axes have hit their home switches the machine is ready to work.

Most machines will not do any work until homed because it is too dangerous.

The accuracy of the homing operation ties in with whether you can do a work placement on a fixed point of the bed, and repeatedly go back to it even after power cycling the machine.

Glowforge does not use traditional electric switches in the homing routine, rather it “looks” for the Glowforge logo on the top of the print head. Once it has moved to a position where the camera image matches the Home one it accepts that position and does everything else in X & Y axis moves from there.

So my question to @rbtdanforth was “how accurate is the homing” All it needs to do is repeat well, and we can position stock based on a reference on the bed, and a numerical precision offset.

Hope that makes sense.

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The problem has not been that precision, but how to accurately tie that to a location on the crumb tray. Of late, because of the tie in precision, I have been able to go so close to the edge that the cut is made a fingernail thickness from the edge, an even when I get too crazy and it goes over that edge you can hardly tell.

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The head will home to within 1/1000th", the stated maximum resolution…

Score a simple design. Turn off the machine. Manually move the head around. Turn on the machine, then score the same design. You will not be able to tell that it was printed again.

At least, that’s how my machine works.

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