Inaccurate Cuts

But that’s just it, nothing’s wrong with the file… When the problem occurs, I scrap the parts that messed up, remove the good ones, throw in some salvaged scrapwood onto the bed, reposition the parts that didn’t cut right in the GUI and cut. Then they work. Most of the time. The more shapes I take out, the less likely it is for screw ups to happen. =P

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@Jules I took the file as you did and saved it as a plain SVG, grouped the file in Inkscape and it came out accurate.

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Don’t know what it is yet, these are just ideas to try to track it down. :slightly_smiling_face:

Yeah, I had it and only 2 other shapes… and it cut fine. Same shape that’s been screwing up when with a whole mess of others. =P

Make sure you never manually move or bump the head while the Glowforge is turned on. To me it looks like it got bumped at some point. Is there a chance the air assist below the head is bumping something within the bed? Like a magnet or something?

Ever since my Glowforge has no problem with booting up, I’ve not touched the head (when on it off). No magnets being used for these cuts either since the sheet of draft board lays flat. But even then, how would I fix that? I originally thought it was a calibration issue, but it calibrates every time I turn it on, heh.

Even if the draftboard is flat (or maybe especially) I think it’s worth holding down with pegs or magnets. I use those to hold down pretty much everything, unless there’s not enough room on the crumb tray. At best, it will work, at worst it will remove one more possibility.

Well even so, the wood lays flat and it’s clear that’s not the issue as it pertains to these inaccurate cuts. =(

Is it possibly location/bed area induced? Is it ghd same part/area of try he bed that always/most often messes up? Don’t know why that would happen but maybe?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hmmm, nothing I’ve noticed. The overlap has happened in the middle and the left… the altogether shifting has also happened middle/right and far left/top. Nothing really pointing to any kind of pattern…

Flatness may not be the issue, but motion might. The way I read your accounts, sometimes the cuts are properly aligned, sometimes they’re not. And more likely to have proper alignment when there are fewer total cuts being made. There aren’t a lot of things in the GF software that could produce that result inconsistently for the same file. There are some hardware things that could do it, with either the motion system losing steps inconsistently or the material moving during the job. If you can guarantee that the material isn’t moving (by pinning it down or using serious magnets) and the problem still occurs, you’ve made the issue easier to diagnose.

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Yeah, that kind of worries me as that’s something I cannot fix. =(

Ribbon cable lying flat with no twists? No junk on the side belts?

My first GF started doing that when it developed alignment issues. If I cut anything that had parts within the rightmost few inches of the bed, everything would get misaligned and things would overlap and come out funky.

Try printing a Gift of Good Measure as far to the right as possible on the bed, and see if it messes up. If so, it might be the same problem I had.

I’ll give that a shot tomorrow. Did you have to replace your glowforge? Not sure how possible that is since I’ve had mine a good while now…

Yep, I did. I’d had it about 6 months before it started going wonky on me.

Thanks for the help in this thread, everyone. The steps suggested by @geek2nurse are exactly what’s called for to help us troubleshoot further.

I will suggest one alteration, however. Since the printable area on your Glowforge is smaller when you’re engraving, you may not be able to place the Gift of Good Measure as far to the right as your cut-only designs.

Could you please ignore the “Engrave” steps in the Gift of Good Measure when you run this test? Print it near the far right hand edge of the material, and let me know how it goes, along with the date and time of the print.

Thanks in advance!

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Sure thing… I tested at 1:05pm (Pacific), 10/11/18. No engraving and it looks like the scoring and cuts were flawless. I placed it in the top right corner, as far as it could go with the arrow keys.

Unfortunately, it looks like your unit is experiencing an issue that we can’t resolve remotely. I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details. I’m so sorry about the bad news.