Lens focus

[evansd2]

Is your lens upside down?

Help! My GF has stopped working

I don’t know the timeline of when you cleaned, but if the focus appears to be off (as in you can see it hitting the crumb tray, but it’s not leaving a mark on your material), it’s possible you reinstalled the lens upside down. It should look like this: [11%20AM] The lens material will be biased down, towards the tool and then lens will sit firmly on the installation tool.

[vee]

I’m sorry for the challenging start. I extracted the logs from your Glowforge to look into this issue and it looks like Pico Puzzle 12-piece Jigsaw was printed on Proofgrade without the crumb tray inserted. While the material you print on can be up to 2" thick, in this case it needs to be raised up so that your Glowforge can focus on your material. For best results, the top of your material should be between 1.5" and 2" high, measured from the metal plate on the bottom.

Could you please try printing again after inserting the crumb tray, and let me know how it goes? If it doesn’t turn out well, please reply with the date and time of the print so I can investigate.

Thanks in advance!

[rpegg]

Since you just got the GF today, I’m going to guess you haven’t received the crumb tray. It’s a separate package.

[jacko]

nope got the crumb tray, but isnt the machine supposed to know when its not installed and automatically adjust? it appears so since you just told me you can see that its not there . since there is no manual focus height i cant see any other way its supposed to work. Also, when i scan the proofgrade material and load a design, where it actually cuts is about half an inch to the right as it shows its supposed to. if that is " normal " whats the point of the whole camera thing in the first place?

[rpegg]

The automatic material thickness capability only determines material height within a 1/2" range. The top of the crumbtray, if installed, is zero height. Material can be as much as 1/2" above that point. If the crumbtray is not installed then we need to raise the top of whatever material is installed to that same 0-1/2" range for the scanning to work for Proofgrade materials. If not using PG material then we need to tell the machine the material height by clicking on the word “Unknown” in the top left and manually entering material height. It’s a little complicated but fairly straightforward once one understands how it works.

[jbmanning5]

@jacko

it appears so since you just told me you can see that its not there .

The lid camera takes pictures before and after the cut. It’s not a line item in the text logs that indicated the crumb tray wasn’t in place but a digital image.

The actual focal range that the lens can focus the beam is 1/2”. As @rpegg said, the crumbtray surface is considered the zero, or bottom of the focal range and it extends 1/2” upwards from there.

[jacko]

Are you suggesting that they logged into my glowforge and looked through the camera? That’s an incredible privacy / security violation if they did as well as carrying some serious intellectual property implications.

[jbmanning5]

I don’t think that I suggested any such thing.

[rpegg]

When the GF scans an image for the preview image a single snapshot is sent to the cloud for processing and dewarping. When you post a problem report they need to look at the log files and probably the snapshot to answer your question. It’s all in the Terms and Conditions.

I’m sure the log files also told them that the material height was not within the range expected with the crumbtray.

[jacko]

can you point me to the terms and conditions where it says they can do this? I doubt that is actually true because as of 2 days ago with the new privacy laws such a thing would not end well for Glowforge and stating something like that in the terms and conditions would be even more serious.

[jbmanning5]

Bring your ideas to life.

Bring your ideas to life.

[jacko]

Thx… and that privacy policy specifically states that it does not collect Information from cameras, specially when it’s unrequested .

[stpatty33]

So the bottom line is, if your material is half an inch deep or less, you always use the crumb tray–and the glowforge always assumes that you’re using the crumb tray unless you’re going in and doing calculations to account for it not being there.

[Jules]

They do collect photographic information from the bed of the machine with every calibration routine, and before and after every print, as well as every time the screen view refreshes. It’s how they align the prints on the material.

The screen shots that you see in the app are collected photos, and yes, they can go back and look at them if there is a problem with a print that needs to be resolved.

It is stated in the Privacy Policy here:

Just wanted to make sure that you understand that they do have the ability to view the inside of the printing area… it’s how the machine works.

[jbmanning5]

???

In any of the situations we list, we take the information you give us and hold onto it for our records. In so doing, we may store information such as: your name; your email address; your username and password; the name of any referrer; the name of any people referred; your contact information, including any billing or shipping address/es; records of anything you order from us or request from us; and photos or other documents submitted by you or collected through the Service, including photos taken by the Glowforge, to enable your use of that User Content or to resolve any issues that may arise with the Service.

[jacko]

Ok good… they are covered

Anyways, so how do we offset no crumb tray ? Add the height to the material thickness?

[Jules]

There are tutorials that outline how to use the machine without the crumb tray in place:

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…

Cutting Without the Crumb Tray - The NO MATH Edition

There’s a great tutorial here on cutting without the crumb tray when you want to work with thicker material. If you want to know the numbers and theory behind it, go read that first, and then come back. Thank you, @henryhbk! This method uses the digital calipers you should already have, and the not-used-often-enough ZERO button. We’re going to go through the steps from the tutorial above, but without any math or writing down numbers. The first step is to find the height of your crumb tray’s su…

Tray Removed - Calculator - Updated

After seeing a couple of people talking about the correct way to do this I made a calculator to simplify the process and hopefully demonstrate the goal. All you need to do is add the height of your object and the base you want to use and it will tell you if it will work or not and the setting to use in the GF, if it won’t work it will tell you why. If you don’t have a base in mind just put 0 and it will give you the minimum needed. [image] Zip file TrayCalculator3.xlsx (33.8 KB) Dropbox in …

Those should get you started…in addition, several people have shared prop files in the Free Files section.

[PlGHEADED]

@jacko

Add the height to the material thickness?

exactly ! esp. if item taller than 0.5

[jaz]

Thanks for the help, everyone. Thank you @Jules for linking those resources.

@jacko I’m sorry for the confusion surrounding our privacy policy and how we troubleshoot. If you are interested, you can learn more about how we troubleshoot here.

I’m going to close this topic. Please post a new one if you have any other questions.