Making a calendar for life

Hi Glowforge. First-time poster here :slight_smile:

I’m creating a calendar that shows an entire life in weeks (each week is a circle). Do you know why the engraved circles in my pattern are shifted in specific locations? There is vibration in the table that my glowforge sits on, but the offset only improved marginally after taping down my workpiece. A few notes:

  • It isn’t like the glowforge engraves the circles in any discernable order (down rows or columns, for example); The laser snakes around the array, and the circles with the most significant offset are those engraved last.
  • The stroke/vector of the circle touches the adjacent circle. I did this because I didn’t want the line to be noticeably thicker there. Maybe this slight overlap is giving the glowforge issues?

This is a known issue, has been for years. Very large numbers of repeated shapes will very often score/cut that way.

4 Likes

I can’t find the existing discussion but an owner discovered this and shared a file, along with a photo of similar results. Several of us printed that same file with similar, but not identical results - and it varied each time. I scored onto cardboard so I could try it multiple times.

I think the workaround might have been to break down the file so only a limited number are printed at one time - perhaps as separate jobs, perhaps as different print steps.

3 Likes

@eflyguy, thanks for the quick and knowledgeable response. Breaking the pattern into separate files would be annoying but doable. I appreciate the support!

1 Like

There’s a similar problem where in an array of repeated shapes, the head speed can vary, speeding up dramatically for just some of the shapes. This means if I am cutting out a bunch of circles, some of them won’t cut through.

@justen.england if you are up for it, you can contact support. Let us know what they say and we can help you make your case, and maybe some of us can file similar issues at the same time for backup. I did that years ago but all I got back was “thanks we’ll report it to engineering.”

@dan if you are out there, this really should be fixed. This motion planner error is easily reproducible and it causes real problems in normal projects.

2 Likes

Regarding the motion planning, I’ve noticed a difference. On the large token orders I’ve done, the cuts would progress sequentially but skip 2 in one spot and then another pair in another place, and go back and cut them at the end. Now the full sheet are all cut in line without any skips.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.