Just finished my first two prints. Turned out great. I did the keychain ruler and the little box that glowforge provides the templates for. I used the proofgrade material provided.
My only problem was that both prints did not print as close to the edge of the proof grade material as it should have. The key chain was about 1 inch off in both the horizontal and vertical direction. The box was maybe the same or a little better in the horizontal direction, but was 2 inchs off in the vertical direction. Any thoughts?
Also, just wanting to clarify this. When I flip the Glowforge switch on the back of the glowforge to “ON”, am I allowed to open the glowforge and put stuff in it? Or can you only open it when the entire machine is off. Wanting to make sure I don’t expose myself to any hazardous lasers. So when I did the box project, I turned the entire machine off to exchange out the piece of paper for the plywood. Obviously more convenient if I don’t have to shut the machine off.
The material is larger than the cuttable area on the bed, so you will usually have about an inch at the top and 3/4" on the left side that you can’t reach with the laser. The current cuttable area is just under 19.5" by 11". If you measure a sheet of Proofgrade, you’ll find that it’s about 21" x 12". So that accounts for the extra bits left over on the left and top. If you want to cut in those areas, you’ll need to flip the material over and bring that to the front of the machine, and just use the Pulldown menu in the Unknown Materials button (top left column in the app) to bring the correct settings information in.
You can bring the material all the way to the front, over the gridded area, to access the most of the material in one pass.
Absolutely! (If you have a job ready to print, it will cancel the print, but you can just press the Print button again on the app and then go press the flashing Start button on the machine.)
Or another way to describe it… The camera does not show all of the material at the top or left side of the bed. The view is cropped. So if you placed at the edges of the view, it wasn’t the edge of the material.
Congratulations and just to add to what @Jules and @rpegg said, don’t throw that inch of scrap away, there are dozens of things to cut out of smaller scraps, many you will find here.
Yes. The lid has magnetic interlocks, and will not allow the laser to fire when it is open. When no job is running, you can open the lid and arrange your materials to your heart’s delight. Closing the lid will then trigger a new bed scan and photo. If you open the lid while a job is running, the laser will immediately stop firing, the job will cancel, and the head/gantry will return the the upper/left starting point.
