Speed Cant Go Above 500

For an engrave or a cut? Cuts are a max of 500 and engraves are a max of 1000.

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A cut… but I’ve use a higher cut speed before (as I said, to align)… unless I’m crazy.

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Probably not crazy. That would require an evaluation by certified medical personnel. As far as I know 500 has been the speed limit for cuts since the change from the old system to the new. Engraves at 1000. (BTW: Old system had much lower maximum values)

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I’ve never tried to enter a value >500/1000. Again, I’m ashamed of my lack of imagination and/or inquisitiveness.

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Maybe I did change the speed setting and just never knew it was auto set back to 500 all times before when I tried to align? Its possible I guess. Weird

Well… sometimes when I use blue painters tape and I use a cut on my outside lines to align my graphic to the material, the cut leaves a mark still on the material. The PG masking seems fine though… leaves no marks through the masking, but the blue painters tape is thinner.

I’m already at a power of one. And I see that score has the same 500 limit. So maybe use a fast engrave at a low power for aligning? Or get thicker masking tape.

Well having to align is pretty new to me… but have had quite a few times now where I need to do it. This is because I’m either printing on non-PG or because I’ve been using my scraps to make key chains and magnets which is some times in tight areas.

Things to Make with Scraps

It doesn’t matter whether you use PG or non-PG if I understand your use of the term align. Material height is used in the S/W to dewarp the preview image. So it greatly affect how the preview image is displayed. With Proofgrade the material height is picked up automatically but with the non-PG you simply measure the material height and type it in. No difference to how you align anything once you type in that number.

Am I misunderstanding what you mean?

hmmm… well I’m not referring to height, but actually aligning a graphic into a certain amount of space… and since the GF can be off by as much as 1/2", I mask off the non-PG material and use the low powered cut to see if it the cut will be where I need it to be.

But if you mean that setting the correct height should then make the screen alignment more accurate? I guess that’s true but it still doesn’t mean that if I’m trying to place a graphic into an area of the material where there may only be about 1 or 2 8ths of an inch of space around it. Again… this is usually due to me using my scraps to make other things as to not waste material… so space is limited.

Yes, it does. :slightly_smiling_face:

Do a test on something non-proofgrade like paper or thin cardboard without entering the correct height of the material first, and then measure it with calipers and enter that value in inches into the Unknown Materials box at the top of the left column. You’ll see a significant difference in the placement accuracy on the screen.

That height value focuses the lid camera correctly, which means you have a better chance of getting something placed between a couple of cutouts on the material.

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Yes… that I know… and I did say that “was true” above… but I’ve still had issues, some times, not always, where things have been misaligned… I just had this happen last night while using PG on that pirates acrylic. I made 2 but the second one didn’t make it. I thought I would be ok since it was PG and I thought I had plenty of space but the graphics shifted up about a 1/2" from where it was on the screen. And I actually just cleaned my GF 2 days ago.

Shouldn’t be shifting half an inch…did you file a ticket with Support to take a look at it?

I’m in the same boat, I’m mostly within the ± 1/4" but I have to align everything with my secondary manual calibration. Calipers/proofgrade fix some peoples issues, not mine.

All files have a bounding box with rounded corners
ignore everything but the outer box run at 500 speed, 1 power
Check actual resulting position, adjust position in the GFUI as needed and repeat.

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But as I said, its not always off… plus GF will and has said that there can be up to 1/4" of play… 1/2" just a guess but it was well over 1/4" for sure. I have posted about it on here a week or so ago… but not officially submitted to support, but GF did comment on it with the “may be 1/4” off."

All of us regularly place design in very tight spots on used material. Some machines are very accurate in terms of the preview image. Some machines are up to 1/4" off until the company releases a machine specific fix. But all of this assumes that the user has entered a perfect material height for non-PG and has ensured that same material is dead on flat to the crumb tray (press on it to be sure). If the number entered is off by even 0.1 inches in material height we will see a huge difference in design placement accuracy.

Here are two preview images from my PRU. The first is at 500% zoom with an accurate material height of 0.2". Design placement is at the extreme left side of the bed. For the second image I told the GFUI that the material height was 0.1". See the difference in accuracy?


I have accidentally introduced 1/4" error in preview accuracy by putting in a very small material height error. The same thing would happen if you had even a slight bit of warp that allowed the material to raise off of the crumb tray. I’m not saying your machine is within specification. Just saying we need to understand the user introduced errors if material height is not dead on.

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Not strictly correct. The camera is fixed focus and a fixed distance from the crumb tray so the picture it grabs is always the same. The thing that changes with the measured height is the way the software projects the fisheye view to a rectilinear view mapped onto the GFUI workspace. That is very sensitive to height in the far corners due to trigonometry.

Each camera pixel see things on a particular ray projecting from the lens. In the corners that ray is a very shallow angle to the work piece surface, so a small change in height greatly affects where the ray strikes and thus which patch of surface that pixel represents.

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Secondary to the point I was making, and my way was less typing. :smile:
(Not everyone wants the details every time.)

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No but what you said implies the camera focuses, giving a sharper image that allows more accurate placement. That isn’t what happens at all despite being easier to type.

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Thank goodness you were there to set the record straight then.

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I’m jealous of your PRU accuracy. My machine is at the outer bounds of accuracy and changes every time it calibrates which direction it’s going to off on.

I routinely see cuts off by 1/8-1/4" even with proofgrade or accurately measured materials, my camera accuracy is pretty garbage. The inconsistency means I have to assume it is off every time I boot the machine up to avoid wasting material.

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Thank you for the feedback. I’ve shared it with the rest of the team.