ALPS Advanced Laser Processing Software

What ALPS is telling you — the message reference

Section 14 · A–Z

How to use this

Find the message by the words on your screen, not by which feature you were using. That is the whole point of this chapter: when something stops, you do not know what the feature is called, but you can read what it says.

⭐ Most of these are not faults. ALPS refuses rather than guesses, so a large share of what looks like an error is the app declining to do something wrong. Where that is the case, it says so — and the useful information is in what to do next, not in the fact that it stopped.

⚠ Messages are quoted exactly as they appear. If yours differs by more than a word, you are on a different version — check Settings ▸ About.

A

"Add + include at least one job first"

Layout has nothing to arrange. A job has to be both added to the sheet and ticked for output — those are two separate things, and a job can sit on the sheet without being included. See Layout.

"AutoPrint is disabled."

Nothing arriving will be turned into a job. Turn it on at Settings ▸ AutoPrint. ⭐ This is different from paused — see below.

"AutoPrint is paused (incoming paused)."

⭐ Deliberate, and it halts intake in every mode. Pause incoming is the control to use when you do not want to lose your configuration — for example while somebody sends you fifty test files. Un-pause at Settings ▸ AutoPrint.

"AutoPrint has no valid default machine."

A job arrived and AutoPrint does not know which laser to send it to. Set Default machine at Settings ▸ AutoPrint. The job is not lost — it is waiting.

"AutoPrint has no valid default recipe."

Same, for settings: AutoPrint knows the machine but not what speed and power to apply. Set Default recipe.

B

"Binary DXF is not supported — re-export as ASCII DXF. Nothing was imported."

Your CAD program wrote a binary DXF. Re-export choosing ASCII DXF (sometimes called R12 ASCII). ⚠ Nothing was imported is literal — there is no partial result to clean up.

"Break Apart works on path objects (convert shapes/text to a path first)."

Ctrl+K only splits paths. Convert the object first (Object ▸ Convert Text to Path, or convert the shape), then break it apart. See Working with artwork.

C

"Camera not calibrated — complete steps 1–2 first."

The galvo camera has no calibration, so anything it measures would be meaningless. Run steps 1 and 2 of the calibration before continuing.

"Center engraving and Print & Cut (registration marks) both re-reference the job — they can't be combined. Turn one off."

Both features redefine where the job's origin is, in different ways, so together they have no consistent answer. Decide which one the job needs and switch the other off.

"Center engraving: no burnable artwork to reference — mode ignored for this build."

⚠ The job still built. Center engraving needs something that actually marks in order to know what to centre on; every process was skipped, empty, or non-marking, so the mode was dropped rather than the job failing. If you expected centring, check that at least one process is enabled.

D

"DXF has no ENTITIES section; nothing to import."

The file is structurally a DXF but contains no geometry — usually an export that captured only layers or blocks. Re-export from the source drawing.

G

"Generating a relief needs the ALPS desktop app — the browser build cannot run the slicer or the encoder."

You are in the browser preview. 3D relief slicing and PRN encoding are native code. Open the installed ALPS application.

L

"Laser reports no cameras on this laser."

ALPS asked the machine and the machine said it has none. ⚠ This is the machine's answer, not a connection failure — a camera-equipped laser that says this needs looking at on the machine itself.

"Load a dataset in the Variable Data workflow first"

The preview bar has nothing to preview. Open Variable Data and import or paste your data. See Production work.

M

"Machine type could not be confirmed for this target — refusing to send."

⛔ A safety refusal, and an important one. Galvo and flatbed lasers take different job formats. ALPS could not confirm which this machine is, so it will not send — because sending the wrong format to a laser is not a harmless mistake. Confirm the machine's type on the Machines screen.

N

"No board markers found in the camera view — is the plate on the bed, and is the Cam overlay on?"

Calibration cannot see the ChArUco plate. The two things it asks are the two usual causes, in order: the plate is not under the camera, or you are not looking at a live frame. ⭐ Lighting is the third — see The camera.

"No correction fitted — the misses were too small or too scattered to model."

⭐ This is frequently good news. Either your machine is already accurate enough that there is no systematic error to correct, or the measurements disagree with each other so much that any fit would be invented. ALPS declines to invent one. See Bed Self-Calibration.

"No fiber galvo is set up yet. 3D relief is cut on a fiber galvo — add one on the Machines screen and come back."

3D relief is a fiber-galvo process. Add the machine first.

"No live overhead frame — turn the Cam overlay on first"

The camera is not streaming to ALPS right now. Turn the Cam overlay on. ⚠ If it is already on, see "The bed camera stopped sending pictures…" below.

"No lines found to trace at these settings — try a different threshold or less despeckle."

Trace found nothing dark enough to follow. The two named controls are the ones that matter, in that order. ⭐ If the artwork is light-on-dark, invert it in Image Prep first.

"No machine IP configured for this job."

The job names a machine that has no address. Open the Machines screen on the rail — the IP is on the laser's own touchscreen; read it there rather than guessing.

"No objects — press Object above to add one, then pick the column it should print."

⚠ A missed step, not a fault. Variable Data binds objects in your design to columns in your data, and there are no objects yet. The message names the button — that is the whole fix.

"No plausible marks found — try raising/lowering the darkness threshold, or fill in points by hand below."

The calibration photo does not show marks ALPS can identify. Adjust the threshold — or, as the message says, place points by hand, which is a supported route and not a failure.

"No shape in the template's frame colour was found — placed at true inches instead."

⚠ The import succeeded, but not the way you set it up. An intake template positions artwork relative to a coloured registration frame. There was no shape in that colour, so ALPS fell back to placing at the file's own coordinates. Check the frame colour matches the template.

"No stored PRN payload to reprint — re-encode from the editor."

You asked to re-run a job whose encoded bytes are no longer stored. Open it in the editor and send it again. ⭐ Nothing is lost — the job and its settings are still there.

"No subject found to contour — remove the background first (the contour follows the transparent edge)."

Cut-contour follows the transparent edge of an image, so an image with an opaque background has no edge to follow. Run background removal first. See Image Prep.

"No supported geometry found in the SVG."

The file has no shapes ALPS can use — commonly an SVG that contains only an embedded bitmap, or only text that was never converted. Re-export with the artwork as paths.

"Nothing to cut — no encodable process (check the artwork's colours/processes)."

Every process is skipped, empty, or set to a mode that does not mark. ⭐ This is almost always the colour model — ALPS builds one process per distinct colour, and if nothing has a colour that maps to a process, nothing runs. See How ALPS thinks.

"Nothing to encode — add artwork or un-skip a process."

As above, and it names both causes: no artwork, or artwork whose processes are all set to skip.

"Nothing to send — the canvas is empty. Load or draw something first."

Literal.

O

"Only a queued or in-flight job can be cancelled."

The job has already finished, failed, or was never sent. ⭐ A completed job can be re-queued, which is how you reprint — see Sending to the laser.

"Open a job first (or click New job) — Apply needs a job open to apply the recipe onto."

A recipe is settings for a job; there is no job to apply them to.

P

"PDF has no vector geometry; imported the rendered page as a raster layer (open Image Prep)."

⚠ The import worked, but you got a picture, not shapes. The PDF contains no vector paths, so there is nothing to cut — only something to engrave. ⭐ If you expected cut lines, the fix is at the source: re-export the PDF with vectors preserved rather than flattened. See Working with artwork.

"Pass-through blocked — Class 4 acknowledgement missing or expired. Re-enable feeder mode."

⛔ A safety interlock, and it is doing its job. With the pass-through doors open the machine is an open-beam Class 4 laser — different rules, different protective eyewear. The acknowledgement is single-use and session-bound on purpose, so it cannot be ticked once and forgotten. Re-enable feeder mode and read the five statements again. See Safety.

R

"Run pass 1 first — this compares ALPS's own camera model against Epilog's dewarp, so there has to be one to compare."

Exactly what it says: pass 2 is a comparison, and there is nothing yet to compare against.

"Re-lase the verify marks first — the marks on the plate were made under the previous correction"

⚠ A subtle one worth understanding. You changed the correction, so the marks currently on the plate were made under the old one. Measuring them would verify the correction you just replaced. Mark a fresh set.

S

"Saved camera calibration has no valid resolution — recalibrate (steps 1–2)."

The stored calibration is incomplete or from an incompatible version. Run steps 1–2 again.

"Saved to Jobs (draft — no encodable process yet)."

⭐ Not an error — a state. Your work is saved, but as it stands nothing would burn. Usually the artwork has no colour mapped to a process yet. It will sit safely in Jobs until you finish it.

"Straighten the image first — crop is only supported on an unrotated image (v1)."

Set the image's rotation back to zero, crop, then rotate.

"Straighten the object first (rotation is baked at convert time) — Break Apart needs an unrotated path."

Same idea, and the parenthesis is the reason: rotation is applied when the path is created, so breaking a rotated path apart would produce pieces in the wrong places.

"Stamp Mode ships in a later release"

⚠ A placeholder. The Stamp entry exists in the Job Editor's tool list but the feature is not built. Nothing is wrong with your installation.

T

"That does not look like an address. Try something like 192.168.1.125 or 192.168.1.125:8722."

A typo in the machine's IP. ⭐ Read it off the laser's own touchscreen rather than from memory.

"This moves the bed toward the head and there is no travel limit — confirm before running."

⛔ Read this one. Table height is an absolute position and smaller means higher, so a value smaller than the current one raises the bed toward the nozzle — and nothing in the machine stops it. ALPS is asking you to confirm because it cannot read the current height back over the network; the Focus value on the machine's touchscreen is the only readout. If you do not know the current height, do not proceed.

"This row will be skipped in the batch until the value can be encoded."

⭐ A per-row warning, not a job failure. One row of your data contains something the chosen symbology cannot represent — usually a character a numeric-only barcode cannot hold. The rest of the batch runs. Fix the value or change the symbology. See QR & barcode.

"This value can't fit its frame even at the minimum size — it will be flagged, not clipped."

⭐ The right behaviour, and worth knowing about. Auto-fit shrinks text to fit; this value is too long even at the floor. ALPS flags it rather than silently cutting it off — because a truncated name on a badge is worse than a known problem. Shorten the value or enlarge the frame. See Badge Maker.

"There was no camera calibration on this machine when this photo was taken, so its scale is only as good as the camera's raw geometry."

⚠ Provenance, and it is telling the truth. The photo is usable for looking, but sizes measured from it may not be real. Calibrate the camera and take a fresh photo before trusting a measurement. See The camera.

"The bed camera stopped sending pictures and would not restart."

The stream died and could not be recovered. ⭐ On current firmware the commonest cause is that something else took the camera — the laser accepts one camera connection at a time, and asking for a busy camera takes it. Check whether another station is using it.

"These settings will mark dots, not a solid surface."

⚠ A 3D-relief warning. The spacing between marks exceeds the spot size, so the surface would come out as separate dots rather than a continuous carve. Reduce the spacing.

W

"Waiting for you — nothing is sent automatically."

⭐ The tray working exactly as configured, not a fault. A job arrived and is deliberately sitting there until you choose. This is what you want on a shared machine. The full line names the next action — press Send Now when you are ready, or change this in Settings ▸ Tray App.

"The machine accepted the job — it is NOT running yet."

⛔ The most expensive misreading in the app, which is why the QUEUED pill now says it on hover. Queued means the job reached the machine. On an Epilog someone still has to start it at the machine, so a queued job with nobody standing there is a job that never runs. See Sending to the laser.

"Stopped and waiting for you — align it to the marks on the material, then send."

⚠ What AWAITING ALIGN means, on hover. A print-and-cut or registered job deliberately stops and waits for a human to line it up. ⭐ It is the state people miss, because nothing else on screen announces that the job is paused rather than progressing.

"Windows detected — the drop folder is ready, but the native printer is not registered yet."

You can drop files into Desktop\ALPS Drop right now, but printing from CorelDRAW will not work until you register the printer. Settings ▸ Virtual Printer ▸ Register a Windows printer. See Printing from other software.