I finally got my glowforge pro up and running but here’s my issue now. I created a custom test design and on the computer screen, situated it in the upper left hand corner. I placed the plastic on the glowforge crumb tray in the upper left hand corner. However, when it actually cut the plastic, the design was located at least 3" from the top of the plastic and 3" from the left side.
Am I just confused about where to place my material? I’m also not sure as to what area of the bed actually cuts and what doesn’t. Can someone enlighten me?
Merry Christmas All!
If you place your design onto a 20x12" page you’ll get consistent placement when you import. Note however that the machine uses optical alignment, so your “zero” position may change between starts.
There are various strategies for consistent precision placement, the simplest being calibration and using “set focus” before nudging your design into place.
I forget the max cutting size but it’s somewhere in the 19.5 x 11 range. If you put some tape on your crumb tray and cut a rectangle into the tape you’ll get an idea of the limits of the cutting area on your machine.
I use a 19.5 x 11 inch artboard for my designs in AI. It places everything just like the 12 x 20 mentioned above, but reflects the currently accessible cutting area in the GF.
Oh! That’s interesting. Many of my designs however, fill up the entire cut area. What do I do then? Anything different? Thank you for your input. Looks like I have some testing to do!
I am setting my designs up on a 11 1/2" x 19 1/2 page before I save them as SVGs. Should I do 20 and 12 then? I guess I’ll get used to this. Thank you so much for your help.
All the way to the front right of the crumb tray if you want to get max use out of it. The back is out of view of the camera and inaccessible to the laser head.
It’s pretty standard for an inch or so of the top and left side of standard sized 12x20 PG material to be unavailable when placed on the bed the normal way (as opposed to poking it through the front pass through slot.)
If your machine can utilize the far left of edge the crumb tray congratulations, that gives me hope that future software updates can enable that for everybody. The unavailability of the left edge has been confirmed by many users and support as of quite recently.
In addition to what everyone else said, make sure your camera is zoomed out all of the way. If you’re zoomed in too tight, it will look like you are placing near the edge when you really aren’t. The zoom controls are the + and - magnifying icons at the top of the screen.
Maybe we are talking apples and oranges. The camera can see the entire area available for cutting but can not see the entire crumb tray grilled area. If yours is different from that then the company must have changed something because all of the early production machines are like that. Even after perfect calibration.
If your machine can reach the top left and the top right then it is capable of reaching more than 20" horizontally. Not possible as far as I know.