palmercr, you might have fixed my machine!
Going back to take some pictures of the left side fixed wheels for you.
I noticed a hanging wire catching up on the heat sink. This prevents the left side from going back any farther:
I fiddled with the wire a little, and if it doesn’t catch on the heatsink, the left gantry moves farther back:
After tucking the wire up, I did the ‘back and forth gantry rolling calibration’ a few times. and I was able to make some square cuts…
To be clear, the left side gantry never push all the way back before this. I notice the right side went father back when I was going thru the process of removing all the orange bits during set up. So the wire was always catching up untill now.
I still want to keep this issue open, because I still want Glowforge to tell me how that wire is supposed to be secured? of if anyone with a machine can figure it out for me. Right now, it’s just tucked up and I’m certain it will drop again.
Thanks everyone for the help!
I will post if it runs un-square again…
You would think that the cut would be square up till the point that the gantry gets blocked, and then it would make a curved cut. But it actually made a straight cut out and away from the corner?
I’m not sure, but the blocking may happen farther up from where the cut was made.
So the weird angle is a result of mis-calibration without the gantry going far enough back?
Then I’m left to ask, why didn’t the Glowforge know it wasn’t moving far enough back?
I would expect the horizontal and vertical cuts to be always parallel to their respective rails.
The rails for the Y axis (forwards and backwards) are fixed relative to the bed, so I would expect vertical cuts to always stay parallel to those rails and therefore to the bed.
The horizontal rail is on the gantry, so if that is skewed, then what should be a horizontal line will no longer be perpendicular to the y-rails or parallel with the bottom and top edges of the bed.
Vertical cuts might not always be parallel to the vertical rails. If the two vertical rails aren’t exactly parallel to each other, then the distance between them will change at the top vs the bottom, and the fixed-length horizontal gantry will have to rotate slightly as it moves from one end of the vertical rails to the other.
I don’t think that’s how that would play out. The rails are not constraining the space between them. They are designed to let one rail to be the “master” rail and the other rail will have play for the rollers to move sideways. Else any thermal expansion would bind the rails.
Also, both sides are pulled by two identical drive systems. Their relative movement will be the same, barring a stall, but their initial position might be offset which would result in a skewed gantry.
That picture of the ‘missing’ screw (mine is like that on both sides) also shows ‘tool marks’ on the adjacent hole (on both sides) where something was mounted there.
I don’t know, but that suggests something installed like a device for tensioning the belt to a specific value during assembly that is installed and removed.
This is concerning… mainly I’ve been dealing with more “artistic” projects and haven’t run into a situation that would require “squared” pieces. I’ll be testing this tomorrow for sure as I’d rather know before I really need the solution. I’m also bummed that support hasn’t reached out yet but I suppose they are busy. #alittlegrace
Thanks for reaching out. I’m sorry for the slow response.
It’s possible that you’ve solved it! If the issue returns, please contact us again and we’ll be able to recommend a warranty replacement or instructions on how to fix it.
