Placement of Design issue

Good Morning Folks,

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!

Victoria

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.

1 Like

Place your material and images in the bottom right. The camera can’t see all the way to the top left.

4 Likes

Indeed. I forget that some folks don’t have a front slot!

1 Like

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.

I like that idea. Now, do I place my material all the way to the back of the crumb tray?

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!

Once you see where it cuts you should be able to mark a spot to get the best use of your materials.

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.

That is not correct. The camera should see the entire cut area of the bed. If yours doesn’t, something is wrong.

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.

Sounds like you have an issue here. I routinely start at the top-left edge of more expensive material when I want to limit waste. Never had any issue.

1 Like

Yes. I put guides in my template as no go zones.

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.)

Thank you! That does make sense.

1 Like

And are those guides at 1" from the top and 1" from the left? Thank you for your help!

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.

1 Like

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.

Thank you! That should be helpful.

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.

3 Likes