Okay, here’s my issue, and I’m confident someone will be able to help out.
A few times now I have tried making just a custom coaster out of some 1/4 Birch wood. The scrap pieces i’m using have been about 3 and 1/2 inch squares usually. I’m cutting a circle of 3.25" and putting an engrave logo on the inside. When I go and hit print, it starts printing/lasering roughly a 1/4 inch higher than what it showed on the app screen. and my circle now went out of the wood and it’s cutting air when it does the circle cut as well. The whole thing is off by that 1/4 inch or so.
What am I doing wrong? Help please! I searched a little bit and couldn’t exactly find an answer on here.
So your camera has some error, everyone’s does. I would search for two major topics:
One is jigs. You basically make a reference cut first, then slot your coaster into it, and then do your engrave. Once you setup the jig, ignore the camera, because the alignment is guaranteed exact at that point.
Here’s a post I made about jigs ages ago:
The second topic is camera calibration. It’s a standard job you can run that will help make your camera more accurate.
Here’s the thread about calibration:
Be warned, calibration can make your camera much much better, but nothing will ever be as accurate as jigs. If accuracy is paramount, then reach for a jig.
Oh also, check out “set focus” by searching the forum. it can help too.
I did just run a camera calibration and that is done. I tried cutting a circle again with just the proofgrade material that was used for the calibration, and when i hit the print button, I did notice this time as it said focusing camera, it moved/focused different, and my circle moved from where I had it placed on the screen. This resulted in it being off again, but more to the bottom left a bit.
Here’s a ss if I can get it to upload right of what was cut, vs where I had initially put the circle.
You might want to turn off the machine then push the gantry all the way back and the print head all the way left. Last week I was having the same issue. Even when I manually focused on my project and everything appeared fine, it was still off by about 1/4". At some time, I had inadvertently bumped and moved the print head out of position. When it would return to home position it was actually home position minus a bit.
1/4" is within specs for the camera accuracy, but if it has been moved, powering off and re-starting will get it back where it thinks it is (that’s what the centering process does)…
You design didn’t move. The image of the material on the bed is adjusted to correct for parallax error based on its thickness, as measured by the head during the ‘focus’ process.
So that would indicate you didn’t have the focal height set correctly when you placed your image. When the machine auto-focused prior to printing, it adjusted the image for the correct height, which is why it looked like your artwork moved.
Try using the Set Focus tool in the area where your artwork is placed, to set the correct focal height; that way your visual placement will be more accurate.
