Laser moves flask before engraving

[primal_healer]

How is it moving the flask?

[tmoat75rx]

Right when it moves over to start engraving it pushes it over a half inch or so then starts it worked great the first time I did it but now slides it over and starts engraving in the wrong place…I am using the same setting from the glowforge video on youtube…

[primal_healer]

If the gantry or the laser head is hitting the flask anywhere on its travel that is not good. how thick is the flask?

[tmoat75rx]

Its approximately 1" I used the link from the video to purchase off amazon…its strange because the first one worked out great…

[tmoat75rx]

The strange part is that it when it starts engraving it is not touching it at all and it is in the same area so it shouldn’t be hitting it at all

[primal_healer]

Are you engraving this on the crumb tray or have you removed it and placed material under the flask to get it to the correct height? the maximum height for material resting on the crumb tray is 0.5"

[tmoat75rx]

I’m still using the crumb tray…just started using yesterday so there is a lot I dont understand still not sure how to measure without crumble tray the comments in video say you dont need to remove crumb tray…I am extremely confused so far

[primal_healer]

It’s all good it can be a lot to take in at the start. Can you send a link to the video you are referencing?

[primal_healer]

There is lots of great info in this topic, worth a read.

Tutorial: How to cut without the Crumb Tray (Honeycomb)

Tutorial: How to cut objects too thick to have the honeycomb in place The GlowForge has a maximum material thickness it can cut through, but there is a maximum thickness you can even put on the honeycomb (crumb tray) even if you are surface engraving as the laser has a limited focus range of 0.01" - 0.4" *** above the surface of the honeycomb at the time of this tutorial. But let’s say you wanted to engrave something thicker that fits quite nicely inside the GlowForge but not with the crumb tray…

[primal_healer]

Ah nvm on the video link, I see it now. Yeah they have the crumb tray removed in that video and have the flask resting on a few sheets of proofgrade material. They should really mention that in the video to avoid confusion/ potential damage like this.

Engrave Metal with Glowforge

[tmoat75rx]

- YouTube

I think this should be the link to the video

[tmoat75rx]

The strange part is that in the comments below the video he says that is just for contrast and you can just stick it on the tray and print

[primal_healer]

Maybe to give contrast compared to the bottom bed of the laser which is a silvery shiny surface. I would suggest reading that topic i mentioned above it gives a great explanation of what you would need to do to accomplish this.

Basically what you would do is remove the crumb tray from the unit which is around 1.5" tall from the bottom of the bed and place material under your flask which you said was 1" thick so you would need to add just over 0.5" of material up to 1" (in theory) to get it to the proper height that it needs to
1- engrave correctly and
2- not damage your machine.
When placing material to prop up the work piece you must ensure that it does not go out of the bounds left or right of where the existing crumb tray was or it will interfere with the gantry moving forwards and backwards.

[tmoat75rx]

thank you i really appreciate your help on this!!

[primal_healer]

Hey not a problem, just a fellow glow forge owner like yourself. They really need to edit that video or remove it or at least that comment you are talking about because it gives bad information. and in the video it does not mention you need to remove the tray to accomplish that task.

One last thing to mention is once you have the flask all set up is to use the “set focus” feature under the gear shaped icon on the top bar of the dashboard. select it and then click on the middle of the flask and it will measure the focus height for you so you don’t need to do the math and enter it manually.

[tmoat75rx]

awesome thanks a lot!!

[ekla]

Welcome to all the fun!
If you’re using a material/object more than 1/2” think you’ll always want to remove the crumb tray. (The head might possibly work around something taller but it can hit the object and that can cause lots of annoying things like a skewed gantry, move your piece, etc. Also the laser can’t focus higher than 1/2” so image quality can suffer. )

A kind user posted this free file for no math ruler I find super helpful when I’m taking out the crumb tray.
All you have to do is prop up your item until the surface is between the two target lines. No tricky math at all

No-Math Focus Ruler

Leveraging the recently-released Set Focus tool, I’ve designed a tool to help place materials when the crumb tray has been removed, no maths required. If your material is between the lines while resting on the bottom of your GF – not the crumb tray, you should be able to use Set Focus in the UI. If the top of your material is below the bottom line, use your favorite method (sheets of PG, tiles, 3-D printed stands, matching sets of trained hedgies, etc.) to elevate it and recheck. Repeat until …

[tmoat75rx]

Thanks that’s awesome it should really help me a lot thank you for all the help guys I finally got it to print nicely last night… I printed out a flask for a band…

[Ryan.F]

Thank you so much for the great help, @primal_healer. Thanks for the feedback on the video as well, I’ll make sure to pass this on to the team. However, I’m glad to see that you were able to find an answer to the issue! If you run into any other trouble, please start a new thread or email us at support@glowforge.com.