Wow… I was trying to be funny. Have you guys ever called tech support before?
Anyway, I’m not looking for help… there is no help to be given. Its just an observation that I’m sharing. I’m using the same graphic, with the same settings, on the same proofgrade material at the same size… in fact the image was in my catalog still.
And if you are using proofgrade settings, yes they might have been adjusted on you. Is this a particularly wide engrave? If GF upped the speed on you, then it could throw you into the too large category due to the max size being smaller. Using manual settings should let you get back on track in theory.
That’s my point, they might not be the same.
Yeah I get that.
I will try a few different manual settings and see if that helps but this image has a lot of points to it… letters, words etc… and an outline, so its complex for sure.
Do you remember how long it took before? The upper limit is somewhere above 3 hours I think. If you’re not close to that then it’s probably a physical size thing and slowing down the engraves will probably help you out. Someone posted a chart of engrave speed to max size a while back, I don’t know if I can still find it.
Hmm here’s some info:
But there was a drawing of this somewhere. grr
I don’t think it had anything to do with the same of my image, as I stated, I was able to engrave before at that same size, and that size is well within the margins given.
There it is. Yeah if it’s not super wide then physical size is probably not the issue. If GF slowed it way down to make it take more than 3 hours, it’ll fail for that reason. Engraves are the timesuck, I’d start there.
Well you may be on to something here…
It actually seems to have accepted my image with SD engrave but not with HD. I’m not sure why that would matter, its just running at a slower speed and more power.
But I did split my image up as GF suggested in their message, and when i did that I was able to print at HD for the half I split (since I was only printing the one half at that time) and it was going to take over 3 hours. So I don’t think a 3 hour limit applies.
On SD, it will only take just over an hour to engrave the whole image, including cutting. So I could just to 2 passes and get same result, faster than I would by using HD to engrave half of it.
Yeah I don’t know what the actual limit is (it changes), but I think it’s over 3 but under 4 hours. Anyone got current data on that?
This is a really counterintuitive behavior of the Glowforge, but one that people who’ve been hanging around here for a long time are aware of, which is why they tried repeatedly to help.
The way the machine works is that it sends your file up to the cloud to be processed, and what the cloud sends back is a series of waveforms that get “played back” into the motors and laser head of the Glowforge. This playback occurs at a fixed rate, and there’s a limited amount of memory onboard, so it turns out that the fundamental limitation is not physical size at all, but actually the amount of time the job takes to run. It can only hold around 3 hours of waveforms before running out of memory. That’s why lowering the quality can allow a physically larger object to be engraved: less detail takes less time.
The generally accepted wisdom is that many of the Glowforge presets have unnecessarily high LPI settings, so often you can get away with dialing them back a notch or two with no appreciable loss in quality. Alternately, you can follow a procedure documented somewhere around here to break up your engraving into multiple segments, but it’s really hard to do that without a visible seam.
Dan has hinted at future updates that will allow the software to automatically send large files down in pieces.
I think that’s the issue. People are trying to help you. Freely, on their own time. For no reason other than that they’ve been where you are and want to help you through it.
Making disparaging comments about them in that context really isn’t funny.
I personally do tech support for a different company. I don’t find your comment funny in the least. All questions need to be asked when you are trying to help with a problem. It means that someone is taking the time to think about your problem and walk through the possible causes. If they are asking things that you have already tried or thought of, please remember they are not in your shoes and haven’t seen what you have seen. There are also many times that we have experience with people asking for support that have made assumptions about things that end up not being correct for that occasion, so by doing basic checks we can quickly eliminate simple solutions.
I do tech support too, and I’m also a developer, and run my own company. And I’ve also had to talk to a lot of tech support people when dealing with internet or cable issues or whatnot and I’ve emailed them many times as well… many times I have said right out the box what I have already done and asked questions, just to have them ask me things I’ve already answered and or that do not apply just because they are following some script telling them what to do… and then they don’t respond to all of my questions.
So, yes, I can make a joke and all because you are a tech support person too doesn’t mean its something against you or any one person. I don’t care if you don’t find it funny, I did, and I have the right to my own opinion.
Yet here we are, where the questions were instrumental to figuring out a solution and several people telling you it hit more “disparaging” than “funny”.
The interesting part of all of this is that taking people on for their tone is against forum rules technically speaking, yet you have some seriously heavy hitters who are not parts of this forum all chiming in. They know the policies really well yet are still taking the time to try to help everyone involved understand where the disconnect was, hoping to improve the forum.
Take what you will from that.
I have no issues here… I love this forum… and have posted many times and have shared and gotten help in the past.
Again, I’m not trying to start anything or call out anyone… It was just a comment made a website… no need for anyone to get hurt about it.
All because everyone else didn’t find it funny, doesn’t make me a bad guy for saying it. If you didn’t like it, I’m sorry, but again, it wasn’t geared towards anyone.
I appreciate all feedback and comments, good and bad. I haven’t liked comments that others have made on forums before either… doesn’t matter… as I said, its just opinions. Everybody is entitled to have one.
And yet, you posted the thread in the Problems and Support section which is for official GF Support staff and opens a support ticket.
Cause I was looking for a feedback and to see if there was a reason for any changes that would explain this. Could’ve been a bug perhaps. I’m a developer, so if I see some behavior that doesn’t seem right, I report it.
Tech support asks stupid questions because people are generally pretty stupid.
Thanks for letting us know about that, @jetzel. I extracted the logs from your Glowforge to research further, and before you ran into the errors you reported it looks like the last successful engrave of the design in question was in October of 2017. There have been some changes to the default engrave settings for Proofgrade material since that time. I apologize for any inconvenience.
I can also see that you’ve been able to print the file successfully since your original post. That’s great! I’m going to close this thread, but if you still need help with this, please start a new topic or email us at support@glowforge.com. Happy printing!