I returned home from a weekend out of town to find the new speed update had already been pushed to my machine. I actually had no idea when I turned my machine on that the update had even been released. I ran a batch of items like normal. When I took them out of the printer, they were completely messed up. Does anyone have any idea why these new speed settings would have messed with the engravings of my items, and what I could do to fix the issue? To note, my machine was working perfectly fine and normal before I left for the weekend. It was last ran on October 22, and was next turned on on October 27 (when the items were messed up).
The engravings on the top are prior to the update. The bottom engravings are after the update. The right bottom engraving is using my saved settings. The bottom left engraving is using modified settings trying to get back to where I was.
The results have. The values in my saved settings remained the same, but produced different results. I am afraid that I am going to have to spend the time figuring out what the settings should be with this new update, when it took me several hours and attempts to nail down the settings the first go around.
I haven’t directly compared on purpose, but in my testing I haven’t noticed any changes as far as “same settings = same results.” As I understand it, the increased speed only increases the top end, not the original performance. I mean, 1000 still results like 1000 has.
I wonder if you’re having some other issue. I don’t mean to insult you… I just don’t know your level of experience with the Glowforge so I’m going to check the basics… Have you cleaned all of the things that should be cleaned as per Glowforge’s recommendations? Have you ensured your material is flat? Confirmed your tray is seated in its dimples? Made sure your lens is right side up? Have you tested on Proofgrade materials and compared to previous Proofgrade results?
You’re not the only one. I had specific settings for doing proofgrade acrylic plaques, and now they’re not working as they were. Nothing changed besides the update.
The update shouldn’t have changed anything with your saved settings. I’d give all the lenses a good cleaning and try again. Dirty lenses are the primary reason for getting variations in output with the same material and settings.
Your settings can get deleted for lots of reasons. Not sure if Glowforge can restore them or not. Hope so! But you want to keep a written record of your settings for all materials so you can reference if you need to. Honestly, in 2.5 years I’ve never saved a setting.
Did you select a Proofgrade material in the Unknown Materials button to see if the saved settings reappear as choices? (Mine are still there, but they don’t display until a material is selected.)
In the future, plan to keep a copy of your special settings on a spreadsheet or in a notebook. For your own protection. This has happened before when an update gets rolled out, and the machine is being improved on an ongoing basis.
They will be blank until you select your material, PG or custom. That said, it’s a bad idea to depend on the settings saved for each design, although the custom settings you can save for different materials appear to be more robust. Still a good idea to have them recorded elsewhere.
I appreciate everyones help. Losing my saved settings is the least of my worries at the moment. I thought perhaps running a calibration would help. I’ve attached pictures of a calibration before the update and one that I just ran. You can tell from the pictures that the one after the update isn’t engraving strongly enough.
Nevertheless, an update this major affecting saved settings is cause for a concern. Being able to save projects with settings is a super important thing and then being able to make custom settings helps so much with materials.
I do not see anything in the announcement that warned of changes to results with existing projects. I wonder what the deal is.
A few weeks ago I seemed to have lost power–etchings really poor compared to prior jobs with the same material, settings and artwork, similar to what you have seen–turns out I had the lens in the head installed upside down. Please double check the lenses are all clean and in correct orientation! Hope it’s that easy a solution!
There’s nothing wrong with those engravings. The difference you see is the new feature that prevents sharp corners from being burned because of having to slow down then speed up again.
The calibration process only addresses material placement compared to camera view, it doesn’t affect power settings.
Those are Scores and the loss of the little dot at the start points and corners is actually a desired condition deliberately introduced by the update. (It’s one of our improvements.)
Don’t want you to be upset over a power issue based on that - it’s what it is supposed to do now.
We are reaching out to the engineers about this and will update you when we have more information. I see you have already emailed us about this as well, so I’m going to close this thread.
