Introducing Snapmark (September 2018)

It makes sense to be, and I don’t have a software answer. But I wonder it you made the jig out of white material, or painted it white, would the lines be easier to see?

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The guide lines are hair thin and are very pale grey. The problem is that they blend in with the scrabble tiles. Maybe if we put a piece of dark paper over the jig before dropping the images…if the snapmarks hold through two openings/closings of the glowforge door. I’ll give it a try and report back. Thanks for inspiring that idea!

so, your image should be embedded in a file that has the same Snapmarks (SM) as your frame. you shouldn’t have to align your frame, then drop in an image. Then you put in the frame, load your file, hit the SM tool, and ignore scoring the SM in your file again.

IF that is what you’re doing I guess I didn’t manage to make sense of it :smiley:

If it’s not what you’re doing, you might give it a shot. The jig should hold an individual tile in place to whatever accuracy you’re looking for.

Tried putting a piece of cardboard over the jig and it made the guidemarks much more visible…but the glowforge software is being very glitchy today. Not allowing me to cut/paste images, or worse, only pasting images I used earlier and have moved on from, and changing the dimensions while at it. ( i usually make a row of 5 of the same image, so 5 different images on each run). Gave up after several tries to fill the full frame of 25 images. Printing 10 tiles now. Alignment looks excellent, but it’s an awful lot of work to get the laser to print with accuracy.

We have tried doing this in Inkscape, but so much resolution is lost it has made the tiles unusable. We continue to try multiple ways of doing this.

It sounds like the solution then is getting higher resolution files out of Inkscape with your graphics embedded.

I’m not an Inkscape user so I can’t help, but try check the TOC in Tips and Tricks for Inkscape help.

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Here’s the level of resolution I need.

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Hi - I’m consistently getting “Not Enough Snapmarks” from the template file downloaded directly from the Glowforge site. Any ideas how to resolve this? I have not added any artwork I just wanted to see if the template file would work. I have noticed that my camera seems skewed relative to the material on the bed. Notice the QR code for the material is out of focus.
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I put some notes up on using the Snapmarks - first thing to check is that they are not being resized by whatever program you are using.

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Thank you for replying. I’m not using a program. Or I should say I’m:

  1. going to this URL: https://glowforge.com/support/topic/first-three-prints/snapmark
  2. right clicking and saving the “pencil jig template file”
  3. putting my material in the glowforge
  4. opening app.glowforge.com
  5. uploading the file (Snapmark_Beta_-_Pencil_Tutorial.svg) from my directory
  6. I can see the svg super-imposed over the material.
  7. hitting the snapmark button and waiting
  8. getting the “Not Enough Snapmarks” message

thanks again!

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Bummer! (There were a few machines that happened to in early testing. Might be something they need to fix on thier end before it will snap.)

Agreed. My camera also seems to be ‘off’. The material is skewed and the QR codes look blurry. Do you know how / when firmware upgrades come out?

No, they never notify us until after the fact. Just test it once in a while, it might suddenly start working.

Oh cool, I think you’ve shared that (or similar?) before. I love the message.

I don’t see anywhere where you said you scored the Snapmarks onto your material?

If you aren’t doing that, it has nothing to snap to.

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That’s what I saw.

The first time you create the jigging you need to score the Snapmark & cut the holes. Then you can load pencils in and run it again ignoring the marks & the cuts, just engrave. The Snapmarks scored on the jig material will be send by the GF camera and mapped to the ones in the file for it to match the location.

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How can I get this on my machine? I have passthrough jobs I don’t want to attempt without it, and I don’t see it on my machine toolbar in the app :frowning:

Is there a petition I can try to get my machine included?

Unfortunately not, there is no way to sign up for it at this time. (Inclusion in this beta is based on metrics for the machines, or some such other magic that only the engineers have access to.)

It’s totally cool though…you’ll love it when it gets released. :slightly_smiling_face:

Has anyone else been unable to get the snapmarks to align? I’ve tried about half a dozen times and the design just won’t move at all.

@jborrel00 - yes, scroll up in this topic a ways and you’ll see the issue I’m having. Glowforge engineers are aware of my machine’s issue and are looking into it. Are you having the same symptoms?