I’ve been experiencing issues with my Glowforge not cutting all the way through on the right side. After months of back-and-forth with Glowforge support—and losing the ability to run my business during the holiday season—the camera is now consistently failing to take a proper photo of the bed.
Glowforge support has twice stated that they remotely adjusted the settings to make the machine cut more slowly. However, this has caused increased flaming on the left side of the bed and still hasn’t resolved the issue of incomplete cuts on the right side.
They’ve had me repeatedly run calibrations, check the connections, and clean the lenses, but the problem persists. Over the past couple of months, I’ve also had to purchase additional Proofgrade materials to perform these tests. Despite all this, Glowforge refuses to acknowledge my requests for a replacement.
At one point, they claimed I provided the wrong serial number—even though they had already made adjustments to my machine and didn’t flag any issues with the serial number when I originally sent a photo of the machine’s label.
It feels like I’m being given the runaround. I would greatly appreciate any guidance on how to either get truly effective support from Glowforge or find community support to get my machine working again before I miss my commission deadlines.
I’m sorry to hear that your Glowforge is encountering an error message about the lid camera not taking photos. I completely understand any frustration with this since it has been failing to cut through the right side of the printer bed. The error message regarding the lid camera not taking a photo is usually related to the lid cable connections, and has a separate troubleshooting path:
Since that can block the print attempts, I would follow up with support with photos of the lid cable connections called out in the Help and Learning Center link above. If you have not already done so, live phone support is available at + 1 (855) 338- 2122. That includes weekend office hours for a faster response and factoring in the troubleshooting already completed.
Unfortunately I have already gone through troubleshooting and it is still consistently inconsistent. The big problem is the right side of the bed not cutting and not getting resolution from support despite months of correspondence and extensive troubleshooting. How long is the average time between submitting a ticket and resolution?
Sounds like either the power supply is loosing power, the tube is loosing power, or (most likely from what we’ve seen as other users here just like you) misaligned beam from the left to the head. So the further right the head travels the farther from the center of the window the beam is.
Check the left side of the head for a burn patterns or damage on or near the little round window.
Also plausibly, damaged round lens but that should yield an equal lack in curb power evenly across the bed.
This is almost always a problem with the left-side laser window. When the head is on the left there is little distortion but if the beam is only slightly blurred then what energy makes it to the material is considerably blurred.
A Zeiss Wipe to clean that lens can make a huge difference. When cutting it is often the first place that dirt m makes a difference and I end up cleaning there many more times than everything else.
