Refurbished unit stopped engraving after 1 day of use

I deleted the old image and imported the tweaked one in the GF project. I don’t have a problem posting it beyond being in bed now and the file is on the desktop machine in another room.

I don’t think you have “another dead GF” I believe there is a file problem - perhaps duplicate files on top of one another which results in the laser moving as if engraving, but without firing. As others have suggested, engrave a different file to rule out file error.

I’m not sure how you end up with a duplicate file as you describe it. I just deleted the one image I have and allowed GF to process it again. Doing the test now. Here is the image I’m using.

It failed again.

Laser not firing.

Going to the GoGM file.

Good news! GoGM file works!
Bad news! Still no clue why HD Photo mode doesn’t. Going to try with Proofgrade Maple just to take material out of the equation.

Duplicate, overlapping bitmap images don’t prevent engraving.

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And away we go!

Try Draft, even if it works, just to compare. HD photo does not give HD results.

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The other modes were working. It’s only HD Photo that failed to work. It turned out to be the material. That begs another question. Why would HD Photo not work on non-Proofgrade material? Aren’t they just settings? There’s nothing special about Proofgrade that allows things to work right?

Another funny thing. using the proofgrade settings didn’t produce a burn strong enough to get through some of the protective paper. I was peeling it off the lower right side of the doggy and the detail came up with the tape leaving just the wood grain behind. Any tips for this? I thought proofgrade was set and forget.

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As I feared, the white detail you see on his head was just tape. Removing it left the wood grain behind with no detailed markings. This is Proofgrade Maple.

Though not always fun at the time, the process you are working through is the learning process. Sometimes it is enough just to know that things are a certain way without understanding whether it should be that way. Dunno, it just is. We all do it - learn from experience and then draw from it.

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Some people engrave with no masking for the very subtle detail to come through. You do need to clean the finished product however…

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I appreciate you detailing the learning process.

To be clear…

It sounds like you are saying the “Proofgrade” promise we pay a premium for is just marketing and should not be expected to work as stated?

Are you an owner? If so, has this been your experience? It seems to me with the amount of splash burning the air assist creates, it would be nearly impossible to clean detail on a wood engrave. Am I missing a tutorial? Can you please link me to it?

I don’t believe the the Proofgrade promise is just marketing. I believe users have different expectations and desired outcomes for wood engraves. I encourage you to take a look through the forum for some truly outstanding examples of engraves on wood. Here are two I can suggest

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Yep, owner, part of the original funding. Yes, my experience. Please understand: Glowforge has marketed themselves in a very effective way. The “it just works” is essentially true. Cutting, scoring & engraving. If you want to explore the the finer aspects of the craft, you need to embrace the hunt.

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Groovy. I’ll check the links out.

I’m still at a loss for why HD Photo settings don’t work on non-Proofgrade, but I’m happy to be cutting again.

Glad you appreciate the links :slightly_smiling_face: I do not believe Glowforge has suggested that non Proofgrade materials would work perfectly.

FWIW, photo engraving is an art to do really well. it takes some practice and there is a learning curve to understanding what you’re going to get in the material. in what the image needs to be edited to look like as well as the settings and how each material will react. it’s always worth taking a tiny piece of a detailed section and testing that on your material first to see what you’ll get and then make adjustments based on that. much faster (and less expensive) than engraving the entire thing and feeling like you need to adjust.

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They don’t work well on Proofgrade, either.

FYI:

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