Laser grinds on far right, then alignment is off for the rest of the print

I had a print come out weird, where one piece had a gap in a continuous line (the start and end didn’t line up), and there were some overlapping shapes that shouldn’t have been overlapping. I thought it was a fluke so I power cycled the machine and tried again with the same results.

I was watching closely the second time and the laser cut the two triangular pieces on the left just fine. Then it started the cross pieces with the topmost one and when the beam got to the top-right corner there was a grinding sound and then the beam seemed to be half an inch off for the rest of the print, overlapping into space it shouldn’t be cutting. I checked my svg and the vector path is clean - no crazy cvs or anything.

Unfortunately the grinding sound was probably the stepper motor slipping. (It’s not going to hurt anything in itself, it just sounds lousy.) :smile:

That can either be caused by debris in the track or slipping of the belt or the head actually hitting something physically. Once it gets out of whack, the rest of the cuts are going to be out of whack.

I would recommend inspecting the belts and tracks closely, particularly the one behind the printhead, with a flashlight. Look for debris on the tracks or anything that might have caused the skip.

If you don’t find anything obvious, you should probably follow these instructions by @pip on a sheet of Proofgrade draftboard (or any proofgrade material) to gather the information that support is going to need to troubleshoot the machine.

3 Likes

Thanks @Jules, that’s exactly right!

Need a Gift of Good Measure print, as far to the right as possible.

Post or email us photos (support@glowforge.com), and we’ll determine the next steps!

I’ve had this happen to me a few times. It’s the machine head crashing into the right side to of the track and the stepper motor slipping. Then it thinks it’s on track when it’s really 1 or 2 teeth off it’s OG path.

This is a factor of the GF not having the large enough bed size in software than originally planned, it will “go there” but it will do what you are experiencing. I always try for larger prints to push it all the way to the left side with progressive keyboard moves until the artwork goes from grey to red and it should maximize the cutting area to job ratio.

1 Like

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.