So the autofocus thingy isn’t landing on the surface I will be engraving on. Having a drag and drop tool or a way to override the location point would be a nice feature!
Additional information. These are 16mm Jenga blocks, So I am unable to use the Crumb tray. Although I may be able to override it manually, there should be a way to do it automagically.
It does seem to have worked. it’s just really close to spilling off the block
Being able to select the autofocus point would be great – agreed.
In the meantime, would it be possible to place the Jenga blocks closer, if not actually two-blocked (packed together)? If feasible for your use case, the closer together they are the more likely the red-dot laser will hit the “target.”
The red dot is supposed to measure a spot that is within your design meaning that if the red dot didn’t hit the object you are running a job on, then part of the operation is going to miss your material. This could be by design - or not…
For me it only does about half the time. It very often chooses a spot along the right edge, or just outside it.
I might be wrong but if I’m not mistaken the autofocus does not really make any changes, currently. the GF will focus at the material height you entered in the app. the only thing it does currently, is that it will throw an error if there is no material at all where it measures.
It certainly does.
If you input a material height (this is used for camera dewarping), it auto-populates a focal height into each job operation. The job then scans and determines a focal height/autofocus. If the focal height in the job operation differs from the material height input box (IOW, it was changed by the user) then it uses the user inputted focal height. If the focal height in the job is the same as the material height box, it uses the auto-focus determined by the red dot scanning operation.
So I think what may have happened is it tried to focus on the bounding boxes I use to center the engraves. The bounding boxes are OFF for the engrave, as is the target reticle. The bounding boxes are Red in this screenshot for clarity only.
you are saying that in both cases it will use the value you entered…
My understanding is it uses what you manually input for focal height. If you make no change to the field it goes with what is reported by autofocus.
We have autofocus, just not continuous autofocus.
No, read again. Unless I’m misreading what I wrote.
If you change the focal height in the operation, it will use your inputted value. If you keep it the same as what auto-populates when you enter the material height, it will use the scanning operation to determine the focus.
Another thing that would be super useful would be to pick a point, and have it do it’s autofocus thingie, and give you a readout on what it found for a height.
It’s right up there with being able to save non-proofgrade material settings, and disabling a cut/engrave whilst maintaining the settings when you re-enable the operation.
ok I get it, thank you. if you don’t enter a focal height different from the material height, it will use the autofocus beam to establish a height even f it’s different than the entered material height.
so if @mad_macs changes the focus height, even by 0.001" , the laser beam can be ignored.
oh, unless he actually WANTS gf to take an accurate autofocus… and that’s what hw is trying to accomplish…
hey I’m a slow learner after 11pm!
Yah, and I really want the autofocus to work too. Not using the crumb tray is a bit trickier than I want it to be. There is no way to simply input the height of the engrave from the bottom of the glowforge. The measurement the glowforge is using is based on the official GF crumb tray, that is not there if you are doing objects deeper than 1/2 in. I used the bed calculator to help determine the Camera focus height. as you can see, it works very well.
Coming in late, I just add a piece of material where the AF is going to hit, or else try to jigger the design.
If AF goes off the edge it will often refuse to run the design, so you have to do somethingm
Thanks so much for the suggestions! I’ve shared them with the rest of the team.
