Introducing Snapmark (September 2018)

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What not to do: Don’t load the pencil template into the GFUI and then move the Snapmarks closer together so that you can fit them on your small piece of scrap template (pizza box top cardboard ;p) . That made the GFUI very put out that it couldn’t find the marks like the ones it originally loaded from my file.

What to do: open the pencil template file up, move the Snapmarks closer in, save and then load to GFUI, making sure not to move them again unless you are moving all the cuts/engraves/scores together.

Q: Anybody tried moving the other parts of the uploaded file, e.g. the jig/pencil art and not the Snapmarks before doing any lasering?

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Yes.You lose the alignment that you are using the Snapmarks for. But if you want to just cut them somewhere else, you can in effect ignore the Snapmarks and just use your normal visual alignment. Your jig will not be reusable.

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Thanks! I meant to specify before cutting the jig if moving the other parts and not the Snapmarks would also break the file/programmatic connection? Meaning, do you have to move everything as a unit if you want to use the Snapmarks?

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Yes, it breaks the connection. When the Snapmarks are reloaded with the file, it reverts to the original placement.

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Got an e-mail this morning saying that my Basic got the little magnet ;p Had to go try it out, but I only have mechanical pencils. Not to worry, found some popsicle sticks! Edited the pencil file so the popsicle sticks would fit in the boxes, found some flat cardboard (pizza box top), inserted into laser and uploaded to GFUI.

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First attempt was a bust. I had moved the Snapmarks to my material so it would look closer to the tutorial image, and broke the connection to the file. I flipped over the cardboard and tried again.

Opened the template in Inkscape, moved the Snapmarks in, saved, loaded to GFUI. Lasered, hit magnet button… 3+ minutes later success! GFUI told me to happily Click Print to Continue, which I nearly did before remembering that I needed to change the laser settings on all the layers first.

Worked great, everything was perfectly centered on the popsicle sticks. For a tiny stress test, I tweaked the jig a bit diagonally, added some more scrounged up popsicle sticks, hit the magnet button again and after the “Search and go find” found the Snapmarks, hit print.

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If you look closely at the cat head, it doesn’t look like it will line up perfect in the pre-laser image.

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Worked Great! Notice the diagonal of the engrave.

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Top is the first engrave where I hadn’t moved the jig at all, bottom is the second where it lasered on a diagonal. Here is a closer image of the more detailed engrave.

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Verdict: Awesome.

Notes on the Tutorial:

  1. a.Either change the pic or change the file for the pencil template. The tutorial image shows a smallish piece of wood used as the template, but the Snapmarks in the file are spread out to the edges of the file. My first reaction was to move them closer in the GFUI, thus breaking the file link that enables the precision.
    1.b. Tell people to right click and save SVG link as “Save Target as”. At least in Edge, it just pulls up a webpage with the SVG on it.
  2. Add a starter list of “materials”, i.e. a bit of artwork, pencils, jig scrap of ~L"x W" size, settings to cut said scrap.
  3. Mention about remembering to color the individual layers that you want different settings on. I can imagine if the user set the Snapmarks and their art the same color, it would not work well.
  4. Clearly state not to move the Snapmarks. Or only if you move everything together.
  5. Maybe add to GFUI “Adjust Layer Settings, then Click Print to Continue” instead of just “Click Print to Continue” to avoid accidental follow through and re-cutting the snapmarks and jig again.
  6. Add somewhere to remember to re-connect to the Snapmarks by clicking the magnet button again before printing if the user moved the jig.

Thanks for the tutorial, it is nice and simple, even if I managed to get caught on a few snags. It only took 1 extra attempt to get it to work perfectly!

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No, the engineering team is rolling it out with no input from us. I don’t even have it on my home machine yet!

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That’s a good point. If Snapmark position needs to move for any reason, for example to fit on a jig, it needs to be done in 3rd party S/W before uploading. If Snapmarks are moved in the GF user interace before printing it will cause a fail.

It’s as if the original uploaded file is used for finding Snapmark position and any tweaking of positions within the user interface is ignored. It will cause a mismatch and fail. Same thing for using multiple copies of the Snapmarks in a file. It’s not possible to ignore one set and use another. The S/W will still use the first set it comes across for the alignment process, ignored or not.

This is the reason why there is some concern about the process being complex. There are rules. Fairly easy to understand but not fool proof for the new user.

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Thanks for your answer :)! So i hope I get that message soon. For most of my projects I cant really use my forge at the Moment because I dont want to make jigs every time for a machine that was sold with the feature of precise alignement :smiley: with its builtin cameras. Hope to see some progress soon!

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Thanks for the pics! Seeing this now makes way more sense to me. Totally a visual learner :wink:

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My first attempt was a complete success right out of the gate, no caveats. I dropped snapmarks onto a papercraft globe, printed it on my laser printer, dropped it into the GlowForge, and pressed the :magnet:. A few seconds over a minute later I got the “Looks good!” message and hit print.

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The snapmarks were pretty much dead-on…

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So cool!

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Holy cow this would be super useful. I make game tokens by the dozens and it would be amazing to be able to make use of both sides. Right now, I can’t seem to get the adjustments right so everything is one sided, having this Snapmark ability would not only be a monumental time saver, but would would make the Glowforge absolutely perfect for my purposes.

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The flip-and-rescore trick works perfectly with no snapmark required… Leave the base material firmly in place, flip the tokens, and score your until-now-disabled back side after disabling other layers.

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Hi,
Trying to USE the Snapmark. Made a simple jig/template for etching guitar picks, and using thin cardboard the same thickness as the picks. Followed the instructions, did not alter the icons from the template (apart from only moving closer together), set them as scored marks and cut out the shapes.

At first I didn’t move the template, but just added the picks, changed all to ignore and back to engrave for the artwork. Hit the icon, and I got error that “machine was unavailable”. (my GF was not turned off).

I then removed the template, and put back on the bed, about 1" lower than it had been before. After machine was ready again, I hit the SM icon, and got the message it was scanning for it, and then nothing… no error message, no shifting of artwork to the new position as I’d expect would be needed, and not status change…

Any ideas either with my set up, or with my Snapmark tool function/connection as to why nothing happens?

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Oh, @bonny …can you help me? I got email yesterday saying I was getting Snapmark, but I don’t have the tool in my GFUI. On a hunch, I switched to my old machine in the GFUI, and sure enough, the Snapmark tool appears in the toolbar when that one is selected. Unfortunately, that one went back to HQ because of alignment problems.

Now what do I do with the 6 dozen pencils my hubs went and bought for me to play with? (The man doesn’t know the meaning of “a few!”)

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Send a few here…I was actually having to scrounge in the garage to find a few to test on. :smile:

BTW…if you want to actually tag Bonny, you need to separate the @ sign address from the dot behind it by a space…otherwise, it doesn’t tag her. She might see it anyway tho.

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My new machine doesn’t have it either. Maybe it doesn’t have whatever it takes to be Snapmark capable. I’m really glad I finished up my coaster project for the sub vets - I tried one today but although the project had them, the GFUI doesn’t have the Snapmark enabled so they wouldn’t align automagically.

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Yes. I had it for a total of two days and never got around to use it because Zatoichi went belly up.

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My machine that originally had snapmarks went back 6 weeks ago. I just got them back today. When I first got my new machine and noticed them missing I messaged Bonnie. She said it’s a bit of manual work, and they do them in batches.

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Not sure if it is not apples and oranges here but having cut a file it would be really nice if it could recognise its own work and align the cut lines to cutlines even if the work has moved on the bed.

A good example would be a job that had to move to get the engraved part to work. I can and have eyeballed things on occasion and there is huge improvement there over what went before but while general pattern recognition is probably harder than expected pattern recognition such as even recognising the proof grade mark, it would make things quite amazing.

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Pretty sure that’s the goal with the passthrough software, but for now it does exactly that, but only with the very controlled snapmark shape. Baby steps.

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