Invisible printing!

Oh no! So, I just ran into my first snag. For some reason, certain things are not printing. The print head moves but no laser comes on.

Here is a video, and I also attached an SVG. Thanks for the help!

tree2
(I tried to upload the .svg… I am not sure why it is not showing up)

If you zip it up you can drop it here.

Edit; What was the power setting for that? Optics are clean? I don’t suppose you just cleaned the little mirror under the top of the head?

Is that actually Proofgrade or are you trying to use the settings on something that isn’t the same thickness?

If it’s not Proofgrade, make sure you have the correct measured thickness of the material entered into the Unknown Materials slot, and have the settings correct for the material you are using. The default on Unknown Materials is to go to 1% power, which looks like absolutely nothing happening. That might be what you are seeing.

(And if you changed materials mid-job, give a quick check to the settings to make sure they’re showing what you want.) :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

tree2.svg.zip (9.3 KB)

Clean… check
Power settings - engrave
Proofgrade maple ply

I had the same problem today with a couple of engraves. I freaked at first when tbe laser did not come on. But once I tried something else and it worked, I figured there was something with the graphic the GF did not like. One was an engrave of my dog. And the other was an engrave of a recycle symbol. I was using Proofgrade Walnut for both tasks.

I’m sorry you ran into a snag.

I took a look at the file you posted and found there are duplicate shapes in the design. If you remove the extra shapes, your design will print as you expect.

Let me know how it goes!

3 Likes

Ah! Ok. Thanks. Just curious? What went wrong here? I would expect duplicate shapes to just duplicate the operation. Just trying to understand. And thanks for taking a look.

1 Like

Just surmising here. If you have, for example, parts of vector shapes that overlap on an engrave, they will cancel each other out and you will get a void at the overlap. If you had duplicate vector shapes on top of each other, it seems that same behavior would persist and you’d effectively cancel the engrave out.

Thanks for the feedback - I’ll share it with the team.

Happy printing!