Any ideas on why my engravings seem so shallow / are suddenly not as deep?

So I am designing fretboards. The default HD option for engrave was working perfectly on my baltic birch plywood. All of a sudden the engrave depth is very shallow. The engraving is a vector rectangle.

Things I have tried:

-Removed printer head and cleaned all lenses
-Removes Main Lens and cleaned lens
-Cleaned printer head and laser window
-Tried to rotate the object around to see if that makes a difference

Changed the Number of passes (even 3 passes isnt too shallow)

Any thoughts on what I should do? I should note that I usually use the medium draftboard setting, and that has been having trouble as of late as well…

There are no default hd engrave settings for BB, they are per proofgrade material. What material is currently selected?

If I were in your shoes I’d start becoming familiar with the manual settings. There’s a whole section in the online docs about working with manual, let me find it for you.

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Ah, here we go:

Anyway yes I’d start by working out what settings do what you want and then use a custom setting so you don’t get things changed on you by GF or by virtue of changing the material.

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Got it, is there anything left to clean that could be affecting the cuts?

Not really, no. You might get some mileage out of cleaning your air assist fan but that seems unlikely for what you’re describing.

Glowforge has extensive documentation on how to clean your machine, you could always read through that and see if there’s anything you missed?

It really seems like a Settings issue. Glow forge can modify what their presets are at any time. I haven’t read anything that says that they changed the settings recently, but that’s one reason not to rely on if you need consistency. Finding your own custom settings and saving them, both in the user interface and also in a external spot like a spreadsheet is best policy when dealing with manual settings

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It’s also theoretically possible that you have a problem with your machine. If you haven’t emailed support@glowforge.com yet… It might be worth your time to rule out larger issues.

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I think it actually was HD vs. SD. I had no idea that SD was higher power than HD…
Im trying custom cuts now to see

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i would figure out exactly what the right settings are (not the PG name, but the speed/power/dpi/passes) and write that down to use next time. and then save those settings in the UI as well.

also, keep in mind that every piece of wood is not equal. you may get a specific depth on one piece that’s not quite the same on the next, so you may need variation on each neck. or maybe get close and finish it off with a file (which would also clear out the char so the fret goes in a clean slot and may be more stable).

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