@jkopel That’s a great link, but not applicable here. the other user you quote had a different problem : that the cut edges are not normal to the material surface.
My problem is that the laser doesn’t faithfully preserve angles between lines in the plane of the material. everything comes out a little skewed. I think I have seen it mentioned one other place.
Here’s the input. The problematic item is the outer rect (currently black filled) when executed as a proofgrade cut. It’s possible the other lines are also slanted, but that would only be a cosmetic issue. in GFUI I scaled the design to about 3.75" wide.
And here’s the output on dark (non PG) acrylic, placed on a set square. you can clearly see the divergence: the metal ruler marks show about 1/16" at the bottom.
This is a little different than my issue where the cut wasn’t square to the surface. When I first started using my GF I found that squares weren’t actually square. I used a machinist’s square and carefully re-squared the gantry and haven’t had problems since. If you do this and find problems again, you will need to contact support.
Thanks Ben! How do you resquare the gantry? Just gently shove it to the back?
That reminds me… Before I did this bad run it spent 10 minutes “calibrating” by snapping the head against the back over and over Not sure if that’s supposed to cure or cause the problem I’m having. After a while I just turned it off, moved the gantry to center and turned it on again.
I used a machinist’s square and squared the aluminium X track against the aluminum Y track. I had to twist the gantry with one hand while holding the square in the other. I could feel the stepper on one side jump into the next alignment when it was square.
Glad it was enjoyable. A side effect of working in tech support and also of being an engineer who has done testing in the past. If you can provide more information and definitive results it makes problem solving that much easier.
I agree, but from what I can see the camera only uses one point of reference, which would make it small. Either that or the gantry is run against endstops to square it, though I don’t know for certain.