I keep “sending” stuff to the printer, it says it is ready, light is glowing, ta glowing button and the UI on the computer says it’s started and then laser goes nowhere and cuts nothing. I am already sick of turn off, recenter manually back and forth and side to side, turn on, wait forever, and repeat steps just make it cut. I just want to get through a session of trying things and cutting and engraving - lather rinse repeat… without doing this time consuming dance in between that just inserts frustration and hope that it might work.
Is there something wrong with me/mine or is this the actual norm others are seeing?
You do have a problem. I can’t tell you if it is fixable in place or not but I and most go weeks without a problem like this. I hope that they can flash your memory but we’ll see.
I live <10 miles from their Seattle office. I’m happy to drop by with it if anyone in support is seeing this. I relive this same 6-10 minutes over and over with dissappointment every time but the 5 times I actually got it to cut or engrave ANYTHING.
Example 1: of light staying lit with zero movement of laser while UI says it is cutting…
Example 2: of power off, set up head to be in middle, wait for app.glowforge.com to say machine is off, turn on machine - actually have successful calibration (yes, it took multiple tries to get to this video where even that succeeded, then send the cut (literally, a 4" circle to help me make the exhaust gate cutout for the window for this machine’s exhaust) - send cut, have cut fail to actually turn on laser and it just sits there with no movement while the UI happily counts down and then says cooling down. Sigh. This 5 minutes is my personal groundhog day (but, unfortunately, I’m not learning french poetry or how to play piano or how to carve ice with each cycle… and those are all things I’d love to do): https://www.dropbox.com/s/frajjwryjglsnaj/failtoprint2-nomovement.mov?dl=0
Well it is 69 degrees in the work area, it hasn’t fired the damn laser in an hour and 10 plus tries and the flow goes out into the less than 50 degree outside air through the window. So I’m guessing it’s not overheated. It is just sitting here doing nothing giving no outward hint, no log, no indication of what the software is thinking. And it’s is a pro. Sigh.
I want to love this thing but 4-5 total cuts in 3 days with 7 plus hours invested just to get it to do the one job it has (fire a laser) makes me super duper sad tonight as 1:38am while I have yet another night of fail.
Obviously it could be a temp sensor thinking it is overheating or something - but wouldn’t something maybe possibly tell me that in the UI? Is there no ability to view a log of a session, understand fault codes? Anything?
I guess I can see if I can wireshark anything off the network but I’m probably gonna need to then figure out how to man I the middle with a proxy server of it is https, etc.
I guess I just realized now how painful this cloud based interface is when they don’t embrace the end user doing the trouble shooting. I have had good success with the easel/carver web app combo due to the advanced screens and ability to see logs and inject g code directly, etc.
Anyway I’d be happy to drop off the unit for testing in Seattle @dan or anyone on the team is welcome to come to my (messy and likely less than ideal if you need convenient tools of your own) place.
No, that’s not normal. They might need to replace your machine, or it might just be a communication error, but they will need to diagnose it first.
For the record, I usually find that sending an email directly to Support results in quicker resolution of a problem, because they don’t check the forum for problems as frequently. (And you don’t need to do both, just the one email to Support gets the quickest resolution for a problem like this. We can help with getting a file to process or explaining how to reboot the system, but that looks like something they need to take a look at.)
I’m sorry…I know that wasn’t much help, but I think that’s one they need to check out.
I’ll bet the issue doesn’t reproduce at the Glowforge office. Since I gather from what you are saying that it works correctly intermittently, it’s most likely connectivity. Since you’re convinced you’ve got strong wifi signal, my guess would be a problem with your board and how it is interacting with the environment (not filtering noise as well) or perhaps Easel is just better at dealing with dropped packets and it’s your ISP.
By the way, the button will do nothing until it is flashing. Steady means it hasn’t yet successfully received the job from the mothership.
there are 6 Unifi AP access points in the house - the garage area is saturated and I have dB graphs showing signal:noise ratio and throughput from devices colocated next to the printer that are SNMP monitorable - it isn’t lack of good signal.
a “quality” (delta of signal to noise) of 25 is excellent and we’re in the realm of 30-35 from the device giving us 400Mbps to 480Mbps with zero problem. And this is on the 5Ghz shorter distance capable higher frequency network - on 2.4Ghz signal is even higher with a consistent noise floor.
It’s not the ISP - I transfer > 1TB up and down monthly and am on the comcast commercial service and monitor from external and internal connectivity - again, I have data throughout all day every day for months to fall back on.
It’s not connectivity. I can back it with data.
p.s. Solid also happens post pushing of the button when it is blinking and the cut is running - 3min 55sec in on video 2 you can watch that state change.
Try1: success!!! It worked today on first fire. Woot. Let’s see how the rest of today goes.
Try2: fail.
Try3: fail.
Try4: fail.
Try5: fail.
.200 batting average today and with that I’m moving on to something else until support gets back to me (yes, this is filed, yes this is refferenced in the support ticket).
And I already love you for that outreach. Thanks @jaz - the 5-ish things I’ve been able to get it to fire for are awesome. If I can make this work every time I’ll be using this as a tool every day - so literally if there is anything I can do I will to help you. Have a van, can transport to seattle anytime (live < 10 miles from the office).
I recall once watching my 'forge take a depth measurement in a “void” spot. It didn’t seem to matter. Since that day I haven’t watched it take that measurement presuming it just doesn’t matter.
