When the laser runs in the score-mode, he reduces the speed before he changes the moving-direction . This is necessary for accuracy. That is okay. But the power ist constant. The effect is, that the relation between speed and power is changing. The result is an ugly and differently cut/score/engrave. In the corners of an cut/score/engrave-lines are always much darker .
The solution must be an corelation between the speed and the power.
Please change your code.
Hi! It sounds like you may be describing a well-known issue that has been discussed many times. Most recently:
We are all hoping that Glowforge will work on this at some point. In the meantime, there are some workarounds that may help in some cases. See the other thread for more details.
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This is why the HQ score settings use a slow speed - to reduce the amount of deceleration required. Try slowing the speed down to around 150 and finding an appropriate power.
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did you here anything about when they fix this issue of too much powert in the corners?
I’ve heard the same that you have heard.
This is a well known problem solved long ago for many other devices, including open source 3d printer software, where they reduce plastic extrusion as the printer slows down to take corners very much like Glowforge needs to. Admittedly a perfect solution is hard, because material response to laser power is non-linear. But even an imperfect approximation would probably be better than what it’s doing now, blowing out corners.
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Is it though? I can’t imagine the complaints that would result from failures to cut because of an approximation that reduced power going into corners/directional changes.
I get what you’re saying. I really do. And I run into it also on occasion. I believe some other software programs allow for user-defined parameters to be input for this behavior.
You can largely design around it though pretty easily (not always but quite often). This is one of the reasons that lead-ins and lead-outs are used in designs.
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Good point - if it reduced power too much, that would be worse - it’s arguably better to burn material on corners as it does now than to not cut through at all. But if they only applied the adjustment moderately (e.g. only correct 50% for head speed), it’s be an improvement, just an imperfect one because it’d still burn out some, just less than now. So there’s certainly a lot of testing that would need to be done - making sure that it worked on various materials, at different angles and speeds, etc.
The idea of lead-ins and lead-outs is interesting. Instead of cutting continuously through a corner as it slows down and stops one line, then accellerates into the new one, the GlowForge could move full speed to the corner, shut off the laser, and move in a circle to the start of the second line, and then start the laser. Then it wouldn’t be decellerating/accellerating with the laser on so there would be no burn-in. The drawback would be that it would be slower, since it’s doing more moves, but IMO a more predictable output is worth a little slowdown. And it wouldn’t require any materials testing, because they already know what recommended power and speed to use for each ProofGrade material.
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Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll make sure the team gets them.
One option is to switch a score to an engrave.
Lead-ins and lead-outs is another great tip, thanks @jbmanning5
I’m going to close this thread - if you have any other feature requests, go ahead and post a new topic. Thanks for letting us know about this!