My design came out smaller then what the size was supposed to be


I am super happy with how my design came out… exept that it is a whole 2" shorter. I had no problem uploading my design, and made sure the size of the cut is accurate, waited a whole 2 hours for completion, then I noticed that my design shrunk.
Any clue as to why? I waisted a sheet of proofgrade basswood and cannot use it for what I needed it for.

1 Like

Perhaps you resized it when you positioned it? That is something I am paranoid about when I move my artwork in the interface.

Have you cleaned the machine lately? This happened to me once. After I had taken the belt off to clean everything, when I replaced it I got it twisted and all my cuts were off. If not, another thing to check is there something lodged in the belt. Took me a while to figure it out, because every cut was bad, so I eliminated the the file was corrupt. Mine was in the exact same direction. Try cutting the Glowforge ruler with the long dimension running in the side to side direction and see if it prints to scale. If not, the belt is probably to blame.

The screenshot is confusing me, because there are roads in the artwork on the right-hand end that aren’t even there in the engrave. The outline is there, but it’s not in the same place with regards to the roads as the outline of the artwork. I can’t figure out how that would happen!

2 Likes

I see your confusion and raise you one. You can see on the left side where the settings are input that the engrave shows the entire name Budapest…bizarre.

1 Like

I can only think of one thing that might cause that to happen…can you lower the front drop down door on the Glowforge and take a picture of the white ribbon cable in the laser arm from this angle, so we can see how it looks:

image

The white cable should not be twisted, it should form a loop as shown inside the metal track.

(Whoops, I see that @lmk already mentioned the possibility and I didn’t read all the comments before posting. It’s a good thing to check. Make sure that white belt isn’t twisted.)

Did the aspect ration stay the same? (As in, did it shrink equally in length and width?)

To be clear, I was referring to the black belt attached to the stepper motor being twisted , not the white ribbon.

1 Like

Have you run the Calibration on the machine yet? You are not supposed to be able to have different scales in X and Y . The only thing I can think of is a weird native calibration. Rebooting the machine and running the calibration routine again should solve that.

I can do that in a few hours or so… I have thought about what might have happened… I had to cancel a print, because I realized I needed to redesign my job. I canceled the print a few hours prior to uploading the new design. The machine was turned off as well. Could the old design still be in the print queue even if I upload and place my new design in the interface? The dimensions match the old design. Also this is a new machine, and this was the 5th print.

The image capture from the first job might have gotten stuck on the screen when you cancelled it.
I believe I’d still check that white cable though. (And I’d also check that I loaded the file that I thought I’d loaded…because I’ve made the mistake of grabbing the wrong file a time or two.) :slightly_smiling_face:

Also, turn the machine off, move the head to the Home position at the upper lefthand corner, and turn it back on again and let the Startup Calibration sequence complete before trying to run the next job. Something might have messed up the head position information, and that can cause some weird looking errors to happen.

After doing those things, you might want to run the Gift of Good Measure on the sheet of draftboard that the team provided for troubleshooting, and place it in on the right-hand side of the sheet to see if it prints. And let us know what happens.

1 Like

Welcome! @Cool_Cut_Creations

I’m so sorry for the trouble.

I looked into the logs to investigate this, and I can explain what happened, and how to prevent it!

There were two separate designs. I’m going to call them Wide Budapest and Tall Budapest.

Wide Budapest was loaded into the app, and the print button in the upper right was pressed (at around 4:03 PM pacific time).

I’m guessing at that point the browser tab was closed, but the print job had been submitted.

About 20 minutes later, the Tall Budapest design file was uploaded (at about 4:25 PM).

You likely hit the print button again, expecting this to print the Tall Budapest design.

However the previous Wide Budapest design had been waiting to print, and had not been cancelled.

When the glowing button on the Glowforge was pressed, the Wide Budapest print that had been waiting since 4:03 printed.

To avoid this in the future, you can cancel any print that is ready to go, before submitting another print.

  • If the browser tab has been closed, or if you’ve switched to another computer… clicking the print button in the app while there is already a print waiting, should bring up the print dialog (immediately, instead of uploading and processing for a bit) and provide the cancel option.

  • Alternatively, if the Glowforge button is glowing ready to print, you can briefly open and close the lid to cancel the waiting print.

I’m going to close this thread - if the problem reoccurs, go ahead and post a new topic!

4 Likes