If only the cutting area were exactly centered on the crumb tray

Beyond the Manual
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I’ve been doing some quick test cuts to see just how big an area you could cut on the Basic if registration issues were to be overcome. Good new and bad news: First the good: The GF will physically accommodate a piece about 18x20. If you cut,rotate your workpiece end for end, and cut again, the vertical cutting maximum is about 17-1/4. Which is cool.

But then the bad news: as far as I can tell, the crumb tray isn’t quite centered in the GF zappable area. So when you rotate end for end your zappable areas aren’t aligned. Which loses you somewhere between half an inch and an inch along the X direction, unless you can tolerate a design that has different boundaries depending on vertical position . I think I measured about 18-1/2… for the region that is in bounds regardless of rotation.

Still, that’s potentially pretty darn big. Big enough that I’m thing about designing a table top…

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The tricky part about what you’re describing is that the crumb tray can move, so using it as an absolute registration is fraught with peril.

@timjedwards recently made some boots to help with that and someone else was thinking of
epoxying the feet or something, I am not sure how much either of these solutions would help you.

Further reading:

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My crumb tray is pretty solidly held in place when the machine front door is shut. So I don’t think that’s a big deal. And I’d need to move it substantial to center it. So basically I’m whining that I have to use a different jig/alignment tool than just the edge of the tray.

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If you take a 12x20 piece of material and slide it against the front door and then cut the largest rectangle you can. Then what is on the outside is a jig alignment tool.

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Thanks for this idea. I made an 11"x19.5" rectangle (because that’s what Glowforge says was the cutting area) and saved as an svg file then opened it on app.glowforge.com. However, the rectangle wouldn’t resize to the exact dimensions to fit the UNshaded region. I’m assuming the shaded region is OUTSIDE of the cutting area.,and that my rectangle shoud fit perfectly inside the unshaded area. What am I doing wrong? I can’t seem to find a tutorial to cut a basic jig that just makes a hole the size of the cutting area for repeat prints. Thanks.

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11 is too large. Try 10.9.

Also set the X and Y position of the rectangle to be 0,0.

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What I did was to make a horizontal line and stretched each end as far as it wound go ans stay red, Then I used the arrow keys to find the highest point I could get the line before it went gray. then I did the same with a vertical line to the left and then a copy of each to the right and bottom and that is what I cut.

To make a simple line in Inkscape you have to start with a rectangle and in the node editor delete the two ends so you have only two parallel lines, and then delete one of those. Now you will have a one way line.

11 was too big but one scooch above that is probably more than 10.9 that is why I went with simple lines

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