Some parts of print are not aligned correctly

Hi there,

I am trying to cut a pattern that involves a large amount of grid aligned holes for a cross stitch project. I’ve tried the cut two times now and both ended up with the holes being cut in different places. The majority of the holes seem to be aligned correctly, but at some point the laser head moves from one part of the print to another and it ends up being off.

SVG File:
Humming Bird.zip (5.3 KB)

First Cut:

You can see how many of the holes in the image are out of alignment. I thought it was possibly related to rotating the pattern so I tried again without rotating the pattern but the problem persisted. Both cuts were done with the pattern at 1.5x scale in this case growing from 6in to 9in and I have cut smaller cross stitch patterns without issues.

Any help is much appreciated!

I don’t see anything wrong with the file right off. I usually unlink all the clones. Maybe that has something to do with it, but I haven’t had issues before with clones.

Seems like there is some type mechanical issue with the axes.

We saw that in the early days, with large grids of extremely tiny holes - what can happen is that the head can zip around if it’s moving too fast and slightly get out of alignment.

You can try the file below and see if it works…all I did was ungroup all the dozens of groups to take it down to an individual path level, and Expanded the circles. (I’m not sure what program you created it in, but the Layers palette listed Symbols in AI, and I’m not sure if that works in the GFUI. Expanding the Symbols just takes them down to individual paths.)

Then I broke the circles up into batches of different colors, to keep the head working in one spot without having to zoom around…it’s going to mean you will have to set more operations up, but it forces the head to finish one section before moving to another. It might prevent that overshoot of the location at high speed.

Anyway, try the file below and see if it works. If not, you might need to slow down the cutting speed and reduce power a little to compensate.

Humming Bird 2.zip (15.0 KB)

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Thank you for taking the time to update the file! I’ll give this a try tomorrow and report back with my results :slight_smile:

I just did a test on some thicker pine with that file and a slower speed and the holes are aligned! Thank you so much for the help!

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No problem! Glad it worked! :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m so sorry to hear that you hit this snag, and I apologize for the delay in response.

However, I’m SO happy to hear that the advice provided by @Jules has helped to resolve the trouble you were running into, and you were able to print your amazing project.

I’ll close this thread for now, but please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly at support@glowforge.com in the future if you run into any of same behavior. We’re here to help!

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