Scoring instead of Cutting

Hello, my Glowforge Pro is randomly deciding to score materials instead of cutting them (mainly acrylic). Yesterday it happened 4 times. I was using proof-grade medium acrylic with the covering still on. The file was a simple octagon that I uploaded right from Glowforge. I double checked that the material was flat and there was nothing on the crumb tray and cleaned the camera lens. I restarted it and it worked but then did it again. Any ideas???

Welcome to the forum. The Glowforge doesn’t randomly decide to do something different than what you ‘ask’ it to do. Can you please take a screenshot of all your settings down the left side of the UI so we can maybe see what’s going on, please?

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Welcome to the forum.

The process of creating a cut line or a score line is the same - a single pass of the laser. The difference between the two is just the speed and power assigned. A single pass with the laser that is not strong enough to cut through material will score it. Conversely, a score line with too much power will cut the material. They are the same. As previously suggested, share a screenshot of your project and settings and someone can help you.

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Proofgrade is guaranteed to work, so if you were using the correct PG setting you should reach out to actual Support and they’ll credit you for the piece that didn’t work!

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I cleaned it top to bottom as well, even replaced the mirrors and lenses just in case it was a scratch. I’ve had it a while and know quite a bit about them, it is very random. I am having the head of our technology department take a look later! Wish me luck!

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Thanks for this screenshot. Are you stating that the settings shown resulted in an incomplete cut of the acrylic which you are calling a score? 170/full should have cut this design cleanly. Can you share a photo of the result?

Whenever things don’t print as usual, it is a good idea to clean the optics (not necessary to replace the one mirror or one lens in the machine) and then try again. I am guessing that you will be a better source for tracking down any problems rather than the head of tech.

If you would print the Gift of Good Measure on 20# copy paper with Proofgrade settings and share a photo of the result here in the forum, you might get some idea of what is going wrong. We need to see the result of the poor cuts.

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Yes, it did not cut all the way through. It looked like a score but after it happened a few times, I knew it just wasn’t cutting. I cleaned EVERYTHING. the tube, the fans, the optics, the filter, I mean everything. Here’s a picture of the acrylic. When I have time to do more testing I’ll print the Gift of Good Measure and see what happens. Thanks for the suggestion!

On the right of the image it cut one out cleanly, but you can see that on the left, it just stopped. And this was mid-print too.

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This is helpful to know that in the process of one single print, there is this change of behavior occurring. Glowforge support definitely needs to see this photo along with the date and time of this print. They can check the logs of the machine and determine what was happening.

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