Material Thickness Bug

[miss.aventurera]

Hey there,

Straight to the point issue.
With the tray in, no problem Can do all things.

With the tray out, I can’t print a single darn thing… At all… No matter what I do, (Restart, Clean, Punch) the machine it will always cancel the operation whilst scanning because it gives me the prompt, " Your material must be less than .5" tall with the tray in, or between 1.5" and 2" with the tray out.

Also I’ve also (for you Glowforge Staff) done the “select Material” option. I selected Medium Maple Plywood preset and still no good. I get the Thickness Material bug.

Help please.

[jbmanning5]

The crumbtray is considered the 0.00" point. Your material has to fall between that 0.00" point and +0.50", which means it has to either be tall enough to fall in that range (1.37-1.87"'ish). If it’s not tall enough, it needs to be supported to fall in that range.

[Houdini7]

You need to raise the material to be within spec of the laser.

[Jules]

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…

[dwardio]

What are you attempting to do? What is the material and how thick is it. You will not be able to cut/score/engrave any form of proofgrade without the tray installed unless you then prop it back up to the height of the tray.

Your material must be less than .5" tall with the tray in, or between 1.5" and 2" with the tray out.

This message means exactly what it says – without the tray, the face you want to laser must be between 1.5 and 2 inches above the bottom of the GF. Here’s one of many tutorials available here in the forums:

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…

Best of luck!

[miss.aventurera]

OK yea right after I posted literally added .125" to my project using a trash piece of wood and got it to work. So if anyone was having the hardest 45min of your life because of this issue I hope that this post helps you find peace.

Thanks, can be closed now

[henryhbk]

Ya know, not realizing that my tutorial would get cited as often as it does, I have a successor idea. We need to make a scissor-jack type tray that you can adjust to hold material at a given height (I know a lot of lasers have such a bed from the factory). Because then you can make a jig to set the height (like a lot of chinese lasers use) so you always get the height at a constant from the head. @karaelena can probably whip something up on the tormach?

[Tom_A]

We need to make a scissor-jack type tray

I’ve been thinking on these lines myself.

[dklgood]

If you are going to be doing lots of projects without the tray, there are several files available to help elevate the material to the correct height. I personally like these: X-Risers
Search “risers” for other useful files.

[stephen4]

I’m glad you resolved it! I’m going to close this thread. If you run into any other trouble, please start a new topic, or email us at support@glowforge.com. We’re here to help!