Video walkthrough of the Camera Recalibration

This maybe a stupid question. The first thing I have done after unpacking my new glowforge was to recalibrate it. I saw the question about reusing the board to do again sometime or reusing the board in general, but it is helpful to keep the board and use it to check or set focusing or do you just set focus on the new piece you are working on?

Set focus is always for the piece you are currently working on. :slight_smile: The calibration board is a one-time deal. You can remask it and reuse it, though, if you need to run calibration again.

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Brand new GF user here. I’ve watched your video twice. I’ve manually typed in https://community.glowforge.com into my Safari browser. In the search field I typed in “Camera Cal” and everything but “Introducing Lid Camera Calibration” came up. So I tried just typing in the entire post title “Introducing Lid Camera Calibration” and I still cannot locate Dan’s original post with this title. Can someone just send me the direct link to Dan’s post? Thanks in advance!

Nevermind. I found it on one of eflyguy’s more updated post regarding this. Thanks eflyguy for actually linking to Dan’s post on this topic in your post…super helpful for us newbies when some of these posts are over a year old.

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Hello MegUSN1, I am running into the same issue. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the solution yet. Would you share the resource you have found?

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Hello, I’m having the same problem. What did you do to find the video?
Thanks in Advance

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If any one else has the issue: sometimes the names of posts are changed but either of Dan’s post that come up with the search will get you to what you need. Dan is the CEO of :glowforge: and his posts always have interesting info in them!

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I have tried calibrating 3x on a clean piece of draftboard and each time it fails in the measurement step, so of course, I am wasting product now and kind of really mad about it. there should be a test material for this…not actual material. I have a Glowforge Pro and not sure why it is getting stuck at this step 3x now. My GF is not engraving or cutting consistently and I tried to create a Good Measure on draftboard and you can’t even see the engraving. I’m stuck … any ideas?

Welcome to the community!

Calibration doesn’t need a new piece of material each time, you can use masking to cover the old one - or even cardboard as long as there are no markings visible and it’s flat, it’ll work.

They did actually send you a spare piece of draftboard for testing.

That being said, the calibration requires an even stronger WiFi signal since it’ll fail if the WiFi drops out during the testing. Some people have had luck using their phone’s network rather than a router.
If that’s not an option, try finding out what the dB on your WiFi signal is. That’ll give you a better idea of next steps.

Is your machine new? I see you’re new to the community, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a new machine. If you’ve just set it up and it’s off alignment you might do better to adjust the case before you try calibration.

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My machine is over a year old. I have been using it well and without issues, but suddenly this month, the cuts became quite irregular. I attempted the Good Measure project yesterday on Proof-Grade draft board and the provided settings and the engraving doesn’t even appear. I don’t use it all the time, but I clean it regularly. It looks pretty new.

I have 1000mb speed for wifi internet, so I can’t imagine that is not the problem, but perhaps something else with that. I’m not sure what. I didn’t realize I could maske the draftboard for this and reuse, Is that in the instructions?

Speed doesn’t matter - strength does. You can download an app to your phone, or contact your ISP to find out dB. It’s a negative number and you’re looking for at minimum -50, something like -30 would be excellent.

Calibration won’t help with an engrave not showing up - it’s purely to aim your camera for making cuts appear where you think they’re supposed to.

On the GoGM, do the cuts and scores show up, and just not the engrave? Can you post pictures of that?

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Only some of the scores show up, no engraving is showing and the cuts did not go through the draftboard. Image attached.

The engraving is there it’s just incredibly low power. Did you change the setting?

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I did not.

But it also is not cutting through and that was the reason for this post to begin with…cuts are irregular and inconsistent. I can do 2 of the exact same cuts with the same settings, same design, same material (proof grade) and it will cut 1 fine and the other not all the way through.

Here are the settings…

Yup that top step on the left is the engrave, it’s set to 1000 speed and 1 power. It’s as fast and light as you can go more or less, just as I predicted.

Choose the proofgrade engrave setting instead of a custom setting.

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Do you know how that would change? I just imported from the store. It is the free file they give you.

It just happens sometimes. Not sure why, but even though it doesn’t happen all that often, it’s not uncommon.

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See how the the middle ones say “cut” and “score”. That means they are proofgrade settings. If it shows anything else you’ve changed the settings. Click on the ones that show numbers, and hit the back button and it’ll switch to words. Then give it another shot!

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