I am so new at all of this... I need help!

My camera seems off. Not centered. Its more focused on the right corner? My camera is really blurry too. I can’t use my whole proof grade board because I can’t see the top…Im really new to all of this. Is it me or is something wrong?

Have you run the camera calibration?

It is common for the camera to be out of focus towards the edges, but that won’t prevent you from using the entire printable area of the bed.

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But it’s important to note that the “printable area of the bed” isn’t the same size as the whole bed, nor is it the size of a piece of 12X20 PG.

If you place your material in the top left corner of the bed, you won’t see all of it on camera. This is normal. Move it down a bit and that should help. If you search the forum there are lots of discussions about this, so I won’t repeat all of it here. :slight_smile:

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Check out this image - you can see the unusable area (for a score) - it changes slightly depending on whether you’re cutting, scoring, or engraving:

Thanks for the help, everyone - that’s right! Your Glowforge bed can accommodate materials measuring 18 x 20.4”. Your Glowforge has a maximum printable area of approximately 11″ (279 mm) deep and 19.5″ (495 mm) wide, and it’s reduced somewhat when the laser operates at high speed, as it can take space for the laser to decelerate.

This means not all of the bed is displayed, or available to be printed on, so there will always be about an inch of space on the left. This material can be reused as scrap later for small pieces. For example, a lot of customers use small pieces of scrap to print these pins available in the free laser design section: Honeycomb bed holdown pins

Regarding your camera, could you please do the following for me?

  1. Turn off your Glowforge.

  2. Using a Zeiss wipe, gently wipe the lens of the wide-angle camera on the unit’s lid.

  1. Take a photo of the camera.

  2. Place a piece of Proofgrade material in the bed with the QR code facing up.

  3. Close the lid and turn your Glowforge back on.

  4. Open any design in the Glowforge app. Wait for the lid image to update in the workspace.

Reply with the photo you took in step 3, along with a screenshot of what you see in the app after cleaning the camera lens. Please include the rulers, the visible QR code, and as much of the app as possible:

  • Mac: Press Shift-Command-4 and click and drag a box around your image. You’ll find the screenshot file saved on your desktop
  • Windows: Click on the Start Menu and search for the Snipping Tool. Open the Snipping Tool > New then click and drag a box around your image. Click the Save icon and name and save your file

If you’d rather not share the pictures in the forum, you can email them to us at support@glowforge.com.

Would you be able to screen shot the camera view on the glowforge app? So I can see if what I’m looking at is normal.

This topic has lots of lid camera shots.

Here is an example of one that was bad and needed replacing.

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Have you had a chance to clean your camera and take the photos that Vee requested? Please let us know if you are still having trouble and we will follow up with your next steps.

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.