Missed it by that much (3/8" to be specific)

Prototyping a project for a friend and, after a variety of test cuts yesterday, I went to cut a full draft of the project today. Specifically, I

  1. Put a piece of Home Depot underlayment (0.189") in the GlowForge along with a piece of graph paper to find the necessary offset between the UI and the actual job. The wood was held in place by some of the “honeycomb pins” posted to the forum with some magnets holding the masking tape that ran off the edges.
  2. Left the GlowForge on and idle while I took care of something unrelated for about an hour
  3. Had the prototype engrave, score and cut (about 2 1/2 hours total)
  4. Tried to pull the prototype out of the source material with a piece of masking tape and realized it hadn’t cut all the way through. I did not move the source material which was being held firm in place with the pins, and my hand.
  5. Re-ran the same design (I hadn’t closed the UI yet) but ignored everything except the cuts and upped the speed and power a little for those. (Approx. 7 minutes)

But, between the cuts from step 3 and the cuts from step 5, the calibration moved by about 3/8" vertically.

(Last cuts ended approx. 3 AM Eastern, Feb. 14)

1 Like

I’ve had similar issues and am extremely hesitant now that I’ve seen this happen a few times. I’m also a bit concerned at the seeming incredibly inaccuracy of the camera.

Did you bump the gantry with the back of your hand? The direction of your offset is consistent with that.

I don’t think so. I was trying to be very careful and the head was homed in the back left corner so it should have been out of the way of where I was trying to lift the piece out of the source material.

But, to be honest, I can’t say for sure since it was five days ago and I don’t have access to the pictures that tech support does.

I’m so sorry your print didn’t turn out beautifully! I’ve inspected the logs from these prints and it looks like the design was moved slightly in the app workspace between the first print and the second. The change in placement is consistent with the offset in the photograph of the final print.

I’d like to try some troubleshooting to make sure. Could you please try the following for me?

  1. Place Proofgrade Draftboard in the bed of your Glowforge
  2. Open the Gift of Good Measure in the Glowforge app
  3. Ignore the Cut step, and print only the Engrave step
  4. Wait for the print to finish
  5. Without exiting the app or refreshing the browser page, ignore the Engrave step and print only the Cut step
  6. If you see the issue during this test, please send us a photo of the results, along with the date and time of the print

Thank you!

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.