Got a replacement unit last week, and my initial tests seem better, but still somewhat similar to my last unit. I believe this is called overburn but correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s most noticeable on the circle scoring, but you can see the cut has more oomph to it at the beginning too. This unit can’t seem to make a nice circle without plopping a big burn where it starts. I’m assuming this isn’t normal. (I’ve cleaned the lenses and inspected them a couple times just to be sure)
Nope, that’s not normal. Cut power should be consistent from beginning to end.
Here’s three ~1" circles on Baltic Birch:
Full res for you to inspect. They all printed from 3 o’clock, clockwise.
Those two circles in the second picture, was the dark one perhaps done after you cleaned the lens? Or is one a cut and one a score?
One is a cut and one is a score. It really shows on scores so I wanted to include that. It’s really obvious in the gift of good measure’s score circles.
I’m sorry that you’ve run into trouble with your replacement unit. When you printed the Gift of Good Measure on proofgrade material, did it appear to cut all the way through the material reliably? Also, I’d like to take a look at your unit’s optics to check for anything unusual. Could you please share photos of the following?
Once we have those pictures, we’ll follow up with next steps.
Yep, everything cuts all the way through.
Here’s the pics:
Also, just to show the issue a little more, I cut and scored some 20mm circles in proof grade mdf shortly after those lens pics were taken. I’ll add them below. Note the start and end of both the cuts and the scores at the bottom of the circles. It won’t do it so obviously every time with cuts, but I haven’t seen a score on this unit without that overburn yet.
Thank you for the detailed photos. It looks like all of your unit’s optical components are normal and in good condition. As a next step, will you please double-check the installation of your unit’s crumb tray, and specifically look to see if there might be anything underneath the tray in the bottom of the unit which would prevent it from lying flat or settling all the way into the 4 depressions in the bottom of the Glowforge?
Checked the crumb tray but didn’t visually see anything. I took it out and wiped it all well just to be sure.
After putting it back in, did a score test on 3 small circles. Here’s the results:
Where did those start and end?
For me, most objects start at 3 o’clock position…
Yeah, pretty much all of them start at 3 o’clock position for me too (all these pics got rotated by my phone). However, in the last pic it started at the bottom (6 o’clock). They’re 7.5mm x 7.5mm.
Thanks for the details. I’m looking into it now. As soon as I have more information I’ll update this thread.
I’ve made a change to the configuration on this Glowforge.
Can you try running a couple more tests of those two different circle sizes, and post more photos of the results?
I’m going to run some additional tests tonight as well, and I’ll follow up with more tomorrow.
Did the same test on some small score circles. Here’s the results (the new ones are the 3 circles on the right). Looks like the same thing.
Also did some cutting and I can still see the overburn issue with that as well here and there:
The above cut are 2 separate items, they’re just really close together, but you can see where it started and ended on both items right in the middle there. It’s got a weird overburn groove to it.
edit:
Trying out more cuts, and I get this here and there. The oddity is the start/end of the cut:
Thanks for the photos and details.
I found the print where you saw this, and I have one idea about what might be happening here, but I’d like to see if I can verify it in the logs for that print.
It wasn’t obvious from the photo here, which part of the design had the problem.
If we number the design like this, can you tell me which number is in that photo?
Also, did you just see this issue in that one part? or was it seen on multiple parts?
I’m quite sure that one was in the “1” position.
Examining the others, it looked like it happened notably in 4 others. I took a pic of the ones that have a similar “hump” to them that you can both visually see and feel:
I’m unsure of the positions these 4 were originally in, though.
I still have my last unit, so if you need me to try swapping any parts, I can.
Got an email yesterday from Glowforge saying:
I’m writing today with information about your Glowforge. We found your printer had a small tuning issue at the factory that has been affecting the power and speed settings. We will adjust this on September 1st and 2nd so your settings will operate properly.
If you’re using Proofgrade materials, you don’t have to do anything. If you are using manual settings, please re-test them after the change early next week to make sure they still work for you.
So I’ll try out a score test on the 3rd and see what happens. Until then, back to my old unit!
Alright, I think small circular score tests is the easiest way to see the issue, so I gave it 2 simple score tests to see if the overburn still existed and it’s still there.
Pic:
It looks like the tuning issue may have resolved some of what you were seeing.
Some of what you’re seeing is also expected behavior, like the dots where the scores overlap. There are a couple of workaround available.
One option is to rasterize the circles and engrave them instead of scoring them. This is frequently a trade off with time.
I also think some of the print results problems you’ve seen are related to an issue with our software with the number of individual images or shapes in your files. I recommend the one of the following options:
Rasterize any engraves or scores
Break your print into segments and reducing the number of shapes or images you print at once
When you upload your file to the Glowforge app, each color and each bitmap will become a separate print step. Divide your design into more steps by changing some of the portions of the vector design to be different colors.
Click on a step and choose “Ignore.” Repeat this to ignore all the steps but one, and then press “Print.”
When the print finishes, leave your material in place.
Set the step you printed to “Ignore” and print another step.
Continue ignoring and printing until you’ve finished.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions, or any other print results you’d like me to look at.
I also think some of the print results problems you’ve seen are related to an issue with our software with the number of individual images or shapes in your files.
I’ve gotta disagree with this one because my older unit has cut that same exact cut about 80 times and none of them came out with the wonky start/stop cut.
One option is to rasterize the circles and engrave them instead of scoring them. This is frequently a trade off with time.
I cut out a ton of gears that have numbers on them and I learned that if I engrave them, it’s a 3 hour job. I ended up creating scores for all the numbers to get it down to 28 minutes. So scoring is super important to me for stuff like this since the Glowforge is a bit slow with engraving.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions, or any other print results you’d like me to look at.
I’ll do some cuts over the weekend and see what kind of results I come up with. Stay tuned!
