Strange bumping sounds and then off track

Community Support
1

So my GF is less than a week old and has a moderate amount of usage getting use to it.

Today while cutting some heavy card stock (.008 thick) running at 500 with 65 power it made a thud a couple times. Sounded to me like a belt slip off one thread to another on a 3d printer. There was nothing on the bed that it would be hitting. the design was may 5 inches square. And in the middle of the bed.

The design did not come back together at the end of the cut. It was just a couple minute vector cut and should have come back to match up at the end.

I slowed down to 250/31 and reran it . it seemed to run OK.

So what happened??

2

Can you measure how much it is off by. If it slipped a belt tooth it will be a multiple of 2mm. If a motor skips a step it sounds very similar but the amount off would be a multiple of 0.6mm I think.

3 Likes
3

I’m sorry you ran into trouble. So we can investigate further, I’d like to start with some troubleshooting.

Could you please do the following?

  • Turn off your Glowforge
  • Turn your Glowforge back on
  • Place Proofgrade Draftboard in the center of the bed and print the Gift of Good Measure using default settings
  • Take a photo of the resulting print
  • Send us the photo along with the date and time of the print

If the Gift of Good Measure doesn’t print perfectly, could you also:

  • Wait until your Glowforge has been idle for at least a minute
  • Open the lid
  • Very gently, push the printer head to the right with one hand and see if you are able to move it
  • Repeat the previous step, this time pushing the printer head to the left
  • Let me know what happens

Thank you in advance!

4

Feb 21 @ 12:07

It did it’s thing just fine.

When it seemed to have a problem was it was doing a rapid curved line @ 500
front to back . I am not sure the good measure really exercised that well
enough.

Thanks

Ben
ps: it did not cut all the way thru…

866×1154 78.4 KB

5

well it did cut the interior circle all the way but not the perimeter.

866×1154 78.4 KB

6

@palmercr
I was cutting card stock and foolishly threw it away. But you made an excellent point.

1 Like
7

Thanks so much for doing that.

I’ll continue looking into what happened in your previous print.

Regarding the cut through issues, to cut successfully, there are three important things to check. First, your material must lie flat. This requires a clean, properly installed crumb tray and flat materials. Second, there must be no obstructions, dirt, or damage preventing the laser light from reaching your material. Third, your design must be set up properly - for example, with lines that are fully on the material and that are set to cut. It’s hard to know which issue might be affecting your print, so please thoroughly inspect your unit and design according to the suggestions in our troubleshooter.

Once you’ve inspected and cleaned, please try another print on the piece of Draftboard using the Draftboard settings. If your print still doesn’t cut through, please let me know.

8

Thanks for your patience.

I’m going to send you a replacement part to address the bumping and the cuts that didn’t match up.

I’ll be in touch via email with your tracking information and instructions on how to swap out the part. I’ll also follow up on the cut through issues there.

1 Like