Please help! I’m tired of wasting product. My prints always seem to go off the wood. It’s frustrating.
I recommend that you run the camera alignment; you can find it with a quick search. I makes a huge difference. My own experience is that with flat material it is accurate to within 1/32" or less than 1mm everywhere. Yes, even near the edges.
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Are you placing the artwork before or after you use set focus? If you place it before, the thickness of the work piece can throw the image off once you set focus. You would have to move the artwork after focusing and then if you can see all of it on the piece it should be fine.
Here is the link to the Camera Calibration program that @gewubs mentioned…if you haven’t run it yet, give it a whirl. It adjusts the alignment for each individual machine.
Read the whole discussion to learn about using Set Focus and run the Calibration program.
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I think any focus (set or auto) is canceled when you open the lid.
Yes it is. I meant was the art work being adjusted on the workpiece before or after setting the focus.
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I’m so sorry to hear that you’re running into this snag.
Since your prints are landing more than ¼” away from where they were positioned in the preview, I recommend recalibrating the camera in your Glowforge to fix it.
You’ll need a 12” x 20” piece of Proofgrade material with no markings or stickers. The feature was designed to be used with a flat piece of medium Proofgrade Draftboard, used upside-down (with the QR code side down). It may work with other materials that are the same size and use the same print settings as well, like Proofgrade plywood.
It prints a grid of markings, takes a picture, then measures its height in multiple locations. This data is used to make your camera more accurate for future prints.
To get started, click on this link: Launch the Camera Recalibrator
Should you finish all of these steps, and find that you have an alignment error of more than 1/4", please measure the accuracy of the camera and send us a screenshot of the results.
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The print is now cutting in the correct place but nothing is going all the way through. Before It was cutting with a speed of 130 and working besides being off, now even at 115 it is not going all the way through. What is going on now? It feels like I have so many issues with this machine.
Did the calibration and now there just isn’t enough power when I try cutting even though I’m us8ng proofgrade material and settings! I feel like this machine us a waste of my money between ruined supplies, recieving a refurbished machine after not even having it a month there us another issue every other day. I’ve got orders to fulfill and can’t even talk to a person on the phone.
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It’s coming very close to cutting through with the Proofgrade settings on Proofgrade material. Make sure all your lenses and windows are clean and that the material is pinned perfectly flat. Any amount of warp or swelling from humidity can cause the laser to not cut all the way through.
If the cut does not quite make it through with one pass, you can send the cut a second time to finish the cut, provided you don’t move the backing material. (I use a pick or tape to lift out the cut, and if it’s still attached, just send a second cut with any engraves set to Ignore.)
it used to cut through mdf and doesn’t even come close now.
MDF can swell over time. If it gets thicker than the expected size set up in the settings (which is about 0.125" thick for Medium Draftboard) then it might not cut completely through in one pass with the default settings.
You can measure it with a good set of digital calipers and see if that is what is causing the issue. Most people don’t want to bother.
You can slow the speed down by from 5 to 10 points and it will generally cut all the way through in one pass, or you can just send a second pass. Whichever you prefer. But the material is going to change over time…you might need to adjust the settings to compensate for it. Especially MDF and Draftboard, those tend to swell up pretty badly depending on how humid it is.
If you do decide to slow the speed down a little, you can set up your own Custom Settings and save them for easy future use. If you read through the description below it tells you how:
Thank you, I still feel like something is wrong because these settings all worked just minutes before the calibration and now nothing cuts through with one pass and second passes are burning the edges horrifically.
Second passes always burn the edges. There is more air feeding into the partial cut which produces a larger, hotter flame. (And a larger kerf as a result, which is why it’s generally not desirable. I prefer to set up my own Custom Settings to cut in one pass.)
There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with your machine to me. (Three years experience with these.) You might just need to tweak the settings a bit. (Which you will eventually need to learn to do if you plan to keep using it…natural materials are never uniform, and most man-made ones aren’t either.) But if you want to wait to hear from support, maybe they can have you run a few more tests to ease your mind. They will likely want to see the Gift of Good Measure printed on Draftboard.
MDF dirties your lenses really quickly. The FIRST thing I try when a cut doesn’t go through is cleaning all the lenses, no matter how clean I think they are. Make sure you’re not missing any – camera, top of head, mirror, lens, bottom of head, left side of head, inside left of machine.
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I do not believe that the camera calibration affects any settings regarding power and speed. Those are the parameters which influence actual cutting performance.
So I’ve thouroughly cleaned the machine even though I did this last night and again this morning. I was able to get one test cut to work but with 3 passes! 3! aSo I went ahead and put the larger project through, didn’t work nd now it is printing off to the right again. To be honest I’m over this machine and cancelling a portion of my planned Mother’s day sale, I also had to cancel and refund all of my Easter orders because my first machine suddenly turned off and never came back on. I’ve spent 2 days frustrated, wasting products and my time. I really wish staff would help out instead of relying on old forum posts which may or may not work.
I’m so sorry to hear that you’re continuing to run into trouble. I’m glad to hear that the alignment has been improved, but I’d like to take a look at the cut through trouble you’re experiencing.
I see that you’ve emailed us directly, so I’m going to follow up with the next best steps via email, and I’ll close this thread.