Why is it not printing where I want it?

[deirdrebeth]

Most likely the focus was off. I don’t know how familiar you are with the but as this is your first time here I’m going to guess you’re pretty new - if I cover stuff you know then just skip those parts

First - the has a 1/2" focus area, so anything you’re working on needs to be within 1/2" of the laser window. It’s likely that your material is more than 1" thick so this project is presumably being done with the tray removed.

Follow these instructions to understand how to get the item to within the focal range with the tray removed:

Cutting Without the Crumb Tray - The NO MATH Edition

There’s a great tutorial here on cutting without the crumb tray when you want to work with thicker material. If you want to know the numbers and theory behind it, go read that first, and then come back. Thank you, @henryhbk! This method uses the digital calipers you should already have, and the not-used-often-enough ZERO button. We’re going to go through the steps from the tutorial above, but without any math or writing down numbers. The first step is to find the height of your crumb tray’s su…

or these if you want something faster, but not quite as precise

No-Math Focus Ruler

Leveraging the recently-released Set Focus tool, I’ve designed a tool to help place materials when the crumb tray has been removed, no maths required. If your material is between the lines while resting on the bottom of your GF – not the crumb tray, you should be able to use Set Focus in the UI. If the top of your material is below the bottom line, use your favorite method (sheets of PG, tiles, 3-D printed stands, matching sets of trained hedgies, etc.) to elevate it and recheck. Repeat until …

Once you’ve got your material in place you need to make sure that the auto-focus laser dot hits where you want to engrave. If your computer is right next to your machine, then once you aimed and hit the Set Focus button watch the head, it’ll shine a red dot on your material. If it’s where you want it, GREAT - if it’s not, adjust your aim until it is.
That your material is black means that sometimes it has a hard time focusing - you may want to put a piece of masking there for it to aim at.

Once you’ve successfully Set Focus, then place your art work and hit print. The machine will auto-focus one more time which may make your art look like it’s in the wrong place, but if you don’t change anything you should be good - if you’re very worried and want it to be 100% perfect even with the auto-focus then you should build a jig that’s the same height as your material - you can put in layers of cardboard and cut out the shape of your material so that when you lay it in the part you’re working on is the same height as the cardboard surrounding it.

Let us know if that helps!