Incomplete print based on a catalog design

hello,
I just ran a print of the Shoji Votive Candle design on medium draft board and came across some oddities (incomplete print; the camera does not match where the print actually happened).

  1. incomplete print:
    there is a square with a circle cutout. the square was not completed (see image)

  2. misalignment between where it told me it was going to print vs where it wound up printing. This happened a few times (this board is the only material I’ve tried printing on so far so you can see how one rectangle wound up amusingly close to another item (each block was a distinct print on my part of various items in the catalog).

2 Likes

It looks like a couple of things to me: 1) Definitely looks like your unit is printing further out from the preview than it oughta be. 2) As for the incomplete cut, it looks like it was over on that right hand side. Was the square the very last item of the design to cut?

Regarding placement/preview… is the unit identifying the material as Medium Draftboard, or are you inputting Medium Draftboard as the material? (in the upper-left of the design screen). Or, does it say unknown and you are putting manual power cuts, or?

As for 2, it’s speculation, but with the alignment being (that far) off where it expected it to be, it looks like it might have ran the head too far on that cut and lost some steps, bringing the cut up short.

It looks to me like situation 1 caused situation 2.

the Glowforge correctly detected this as medium draft board.

the square was not the last item:
The border of the bottom right piece was the last, along with some of the rectangles within the bottom middle piece if I recall correctly (I was also playing find how the smoke is getting back into the house via my jury-rigged vent to the outside).

I can see that the rectangles within the bottom-right piece also didn’t cut where they were supposed to have cut relative to the actual piece… indicating that the head wasn’t exactly where it thought it was.

Is your unit sitting level? How is the lid when you’re closing it? Is the crumbtray sitting fully into the divots in the base, with no crumbs of anything beneath them?

The primary thing here, again, seems to be that alignment is off more than it should be. Which could have caused the head to go slightly too far on the right hand side. After it lost those steps, that translated to the components cut after that being in the wrong relative position.

thank you for the suggestions on what to check.
a friend has my level at the moment so I’ll check that as soon as I can.
The crumb tray is sitting fully in the bed and the board is resting snugly on top of the tray as far as I can tell. The lid appears to be closed fully.

I didn’t catch that the outer border was out of position on the bottom right piece (thank you for pointing that out).
Here’s a photo I took with my phone. It looks like the bottom middle piece also had issues. I’ll look at the board and crumb tray again.

So, I can at least tell you this much. If you turn the unit off, and then back on, it will force a recalibration (meaning it knows precisely where the head is). This will bring the alignment back in a little bit closer to where it oughta be. The offset, I’m thinking was the result of that head going too far…you should be able to cut ok after a power cycle. Might stay a little further off of the extreme edges until you hear from support.

Thanks @jbmanning!

@david.hsu, would you please:

  • Turn off your Glowforge then turn it back on (This will give it a chance to recalibrate and address the alignment issue that’s shown in your print.)
  • We included an extra piece of Proofgrade Draftboard with your materials shipment for troubleshooting. Place the Proofgrade Draftboard in the bed.
  • Open the Gift of Good Measure design
  • Move it to the the same area of the bed where the square didn’t print properly in your example.
  • Print
  • When the print finishes, if you see an alignment error of more than 1/4" or an irregularity like in the last print, please send us a screenshot along with the date and time of the print, and we’ll investigate.
    • Without moving your artwork or your material, take a screenshot of the workspace to show us the difference between the artwork placement and the actual print placement. Make sure to include the rulers in your screenshot and show as much of the bed 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.

Thanks!

@david.hsu Have you had a chance to try our suggestions? Let me know if you still need help here!

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.