My unit just arrived last week and I’m having the same calibration issue. (I really don’t think it’s my wifi signal, given everything I’ve read.) GF wants me to send it back, but I am skeptical it is a hardware issue given that this problem has just started for others who were previously fine.
I have to agree with @jamesaellis1, feeling very unimpressed and frustrated on top of frustrated.
I’d probably wait a few days and see if it improves before sending it back. There’s definitely been a software problem the last few days.
What wireless radio does the GF have? 802.11n? ac? If it’s using 5GHz, and you have a 5GHz router, one wall can cause major headaches. I have 5GHz disabled on my router so that it rolls down to 2.4GHz. It’s the difference is 5 bars and 2 bars. The devices you’re testing with may not have the same radio or capabilities. Logging into your router to see the wireless clients would give you a better assessment.
The Glowforge is 2.4GHz b/g/n for wireless
I’ve had my unit for a few months and last night I was also experiencing major calibration issues. I turned the unit on and went to the garage to prep some wood to cut out and when I got back to machine about half an hour later the head was still in the middle left position (mid-calibration) and not moving.
I turned the machine off, re-positioned the head under the camera, started it up again and it partially got through the calibration, stopping in the middle of the left side again. Opened and closed the lid, and the calibration seemed to restart.
A few more times off, re-position head, turn on and it finally completed calibration, got a single job completed and then it started the calibration dance again. I’ve never seen it do this before, and it currently is not “fun” to use. But I fully expect that this will be corrected in the very near future.
My understanding is that there are logs for each machine’s operation, so support would have a lot more information for troubleshooting than we do. If they wanted me to send it back I would oblige.
Not just machine logs, they actually track every move you make while the GFUI is open and send it to a third-party analytics service.
You mean like tracking where people click or where they go to look for features and stuff like that?
I had pretty much the exact same things happen last night…there’s another thread about it somewhere…and Dan even chimed in saying that he had experienced it too, while trying to print with his kids. All seems just fine today. That’s the first real issue I’ve had with mine for a very long time.
oh that is good to hear! I ended up shutting my Glowforge down for the night and doing the work on my bandsaw. Not nearly as crisp or clean as being cut with laser precision, but those particular parts are going to be covered up and the slight inaccuracies will not be noticeable.
I smile and wave.
…naked.
They use FullStory.com, so you can just check the feature list:
"CAPTURE EVERYTHING
Every click, keypress, page transition and more - automatically indexed and easily accessible to any team with a stake in the customer’s success."
Hi James. I got my GF Pro yesterday (11/1) afternoon, and it did seem to me that the calibration was sluggish, and I did end up turning the power off once or twice. But then (around 4p PT here near Seattle), the GF seemed to settle down and generally worked as expected.
I would encourage Dan and team to add time estimates/feedback into the GlowForge web UI everywhere (as Facebook did when in the first few years…every page reported the “render time”).
The time feedback during the Print process is excellent (though I would show estimated time to completion, too). So just add time estimation to every time-consuming process (import/upload, calibration, etc.)
Last night I finally got a small hand drawn item to scan then cut. Today this thing is not doing anything. Sits forever scanning, then goes off line so I try a refresh and so on. So I decided to try and cut a wing rib for an RC plane. The rib is simple at about 14" long with three holes and a descriptive bit of text.
Exported to an SVG file and dragged and dropped to the GF uploader. I get a message “cannot process text yet” Nor dashed lines. Nor can it do grouped graphic objects. So I see the wing rib on the bed and try to place. The rib moved okay but the holes which are now ungrouped remained where they had been dropped by the app. I tried to select the holes and place on the rib and I could not even do that.
So its been thirty minutes plus to cut a simple rib and I have still not been able to cut anything.
Seriously?? after two years of product development that the user App still in infant and almost unusable stage.
Correct. For now you’ll need to expand those paths.
When you go to move the entire thing, just select all of it… draw a box around everything with your mouse. Or, as I recall, Ctrl+A will select everything. Then you’ll move everything at once.
That said, you should be able to move the holes on their own, but they could be difficult to grab if they’re really small, and you’d have to click the line of the hole, not the hole itself.
For the text you need (Inkscape instructions, other programs similar) to go to Path and select Object to Path. I believe the dashed line issue is the same technical issue with text. If you do the same as above you should be okay.
In Inkscape if I group things together they stay together in the GFUI. Same if I combine them.
The stuck in scanning issue is supposedly fixed right now; I haven’t had time to verify. If you are still receiving it your unit could be borked. But it is not normal behavior on a working machine.
…chased by wolves…
I tried to move the holes by themselves. I get the selection box but they will not move. Plus this puts everything out of alignment to the previously moved rib.
Anyhow, I was finally able to cut the rib… To my surprise the GF rescales the original SVG. What was supposed to be 17" came out cut at 13". I purchased this to be able to produce aircraft kits. So far its nothing but a waste of my time and money. I ran a software/ hardware advanced technology design group consisting of several hundred engineers globally with Nortel Networks. This App would have been considered very simple. Maybe due to my background that I’m being somewhat picky. But seriously this App should be working to almost full functionality of the basic user requirements. I understand that updates are being implemented all the time. But after two years this unit should be at least able to be semi stable and functional.
The hardware is very nicely designed and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. The software is a totally different story. It is so buggy that it is almost unusable for the simplest of things. Thinking back all the demos that I saw was draw, scan engrave and or cut.
So I would like to see a development timeline for fixes and improved functionality. I did not sign up for this.
I’ll further investigate but so far not looking good to do professional work on.
You could ask for help here regarding design and have assistance in under 5 minutes.