Newbie questions

Hello Glow forge world. I am a newbie to laser cutting and the Glow forge. I have two questions. 1.) I setup to cut two pieces for the same 1/4" wood. The laser cut through just find on the first piece and the laser moves to the left 2 inches and cuts the second piece. The issue is the first piece falls right out but the second piece is only cut approx. 95% of the way through resulting in me getting my X-Acto knife and cutting the second piece out by hand. What am I doing wrong? 2.) Second question. I setup a piece that will include engraving as well as cutting. The machine goes through its setup and then I hit print. The laser head moves into a position but just sits there moving back and forth without firing at all. The clock on the machine is counting down but the head just continues to move back and forward without doing anything. What am I doing wrong or should to doing to get the head to do its thing? Many thanks.

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Problem 2 - If you use Set Focus just before moving the image to where you want to go it will try to cut where you are asking it to.
If it still is not accurate, you need to run the Calibration routine.

Problem 1 - All wood is a bit different from piece to piece and even within the same piece. Proofgrade has less of this but no matter what, the differences in weather while the tree is growing will make differences in the wood. If the wood is pinned in place and you have not moved it and you have changed nothing to move the image, you can re-run the cut and it will repeat the previous path.

When a piece is highlighted a widget will appear in the lower right corner, which if you pick it will show both the exact location and size of your piece. It is these numbers that decide the exact place on the tray that will be cut, even when the image and other things say differently.

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If it looks like it’s engraving, but not making a mark there are two things to check.

  1. What is your power level? If you go into manual mode, but then don’t pick anything, it’ll default to a 1 (which won’t show up on anything).
  2. If it’s a vector (.svg/.pdf) and you accidentally layered two of them, they’ll cancel each other out.

If it’s neither what @rbtdanforth or I came up with, give us more info. Pictures, or uploading the file might help.

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Overlapping vectors also cancel each other out.

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The layered engraves only applies to vector artwork - two bitmaps will be engraved twice.

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@ekla/@eflyguy Edited!

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