I ran a print job with a very simple SVG. Two paths… one a cut, the other an engrave. When using the automatic settings it calculated the job at 3 seconds, then when printing moved the laser to the top/center hen back and said the job was done.
So I set the engrave and cut settings to manual and it calculated the job at 1:03:00. It ran for the specified hour+ but I noted some significant alignment issues. Here is a screen cap of what the UI showed (which matched the SVG) and a photo of the finished cut/engrave. The cut and engrave were all over the place and several portions are in the completely wrong place.
Assuming the magenta line in the screen cap is the engrave, is that a very narrow closed path shape with a fill color assigned? Or is it an open path with a stroke width?
Not sure why it’s freaking out on the alignment.
To me it looks like you can save some serious time if the engrave portion was ran as a score instead since it’s so narrow.
In addition to what the others have said: If you want that engrave line to be wider than you can get with a Score, you can convert it into an engrave line in your design software and it will come out great. You don’t mention which design software you are using but if it’s Illustrator, all you need to do is either Expand the path, or go to Object…Path…Outline stroke. That will convert the stroked path to a filled object that will engrave well. If it’s a really thin line you might have to bump up the LPI setting in the GFui interface to get the best results.
Inkscape and Affinity Designer also have similar capabilities, be sure to read the pertinent tutorial in Glowforge Tips and Tricks.
The red lines are to be cut, and all of the red lines including the circles, etc. have been joined as one path. The blue area is supposed to be a fairly shallow engrave around 1/16" wide or so. The blue was filled between two paths then those paths were removed. I tried it without removing them first and the Glowforge UI wanted to cut those paths as well, which is why I removed them.
The GF UI appears to read the SVG correctly and splits it into two operations, which I specified as cut and engrave. When I click on either one, the correct sections are highlighted and are correctly aligned. Something went way off the farm when actually cutting though.
Glad I was only using plywood instead of hardwood.
Your blue lines have both a blue stroke and a blue fill. If there are both, the Glowforge will default to a vector cut/score. You need to take out the color for the stroke and leave it only blue fill if that is only to be engraved. If you want to do a score around that engrave, you need to duplicate it and keep the separate object a colored stroke with no fill.
Take out the color of the stroke. You need the stroke/path there to be the outline of the filled thick line that you want engraved. You really don’t need the color in the stroke at all.
I thought the same thing given how weird the engraving turned out to be not doing both, but I couldn’t find where it wasn’t closed. The red isn’t closed all the way around though.
I went into outline view mode and the curve showed a break near that corner. I just dug in deeper and there is just some goofy self-intersecting stuff at that corner. I removed and adjusted some nodes and it seems OK but I havent tried a test.
As to the funky skittering lines in there, that’s strange. I’m curious. Did you get a clear bed shot of the material with correct heights for lid focus before pressing print? Your screen cap is of the design before it gets overlaid on the material shot.
Besides those other suggestions, here’s a couple more that will help optimize the file:
You have a few stray points in there. If using Illustrator go to Select…Object…Stray Points to select them, then delete. Also, there is a small oblong oval figure that is not part of your main drawing, up above it. Do a Select All and you will see your selection rectangle includes that tiny bit. It should also be deleted.
