So from the day this GF was designed, who came up with the 12 x 20 sheet size and a cutting window of 10 3/4 x 18 1/2ish. There is so much waste of material. Would it have cost that much more to use the full cutting area. Make the machine 1" deeper and 1 1/2" wider. If the cost increase was only about 500 to 1000 more. You still will have sold plenty more.
Also, from day one using this laser there seems to be a sweetspot that the laser on 1000/full cuts through almost anything I put in it, but to the contrary a spot close the home position where nothing gets cut thru. So many sheets partial sheets have been wasted because of poor cutting area. The GF has been cleaned several time before and after this poor cutting and still it underperforms.
I realise that. Part of the issue is that the parts I have would fit nicely on one sheet. Unfortunately with the reduction of the cutting area I am now into a second sheet. If it is acrylic the cost just went up because now I have to buy 2 sheets when one would have done the job.
In some cases I have had to raise the crumb tray 3mm to get a better cut. For paper cutting I definitely have to raise the crumb tray. trying to get the GF to measure the distance only frustrates me. I set the paper on the crumb tray and do the setup correctly and consistently get errors of distance is out of range. Frustrating. So I improvise.
Yeah, they did that on purpose to annoy people (not).
The limitations are physical. Try moving the head and gantry around (with your machine off, of course) and see. They’d have to make the machine wider and deeper to get to the top and left sides of the material, and that would probably have tipped it past the shipping size limits they had to squeeze it into to make it accessible to us normal people.
The parts that are required for moving the laser beam around take up actual physical space, which can’t be helped. 12x20" was likely selected as the bed size to make it easier for us to get materials from other sources. I mean, imagine trying to find laserable materials that came in 10.75x19" panels?
The other side of this argument is that I’d rather have margins so I don’t have to be fussy with my material placement. If the machine could cut 12x24", I would want materials in 13x25".
My economics are such that the time lost due to a misplaced part going over the edge of the material far outweighs the small amount that the lost material cost me.
The shipment comes by Fedex on a pallet.
Adding 1" left and right and 1.5 inches to the front and back will not break the bank.
The cost would be increased to reflect that. I still would have bought it as the specified bed area is actually the cutting area. Matches the advertised size.
The crumb tray should also be bigger to accommodate hold down devices for materials that are not exactly flat. There are times when the materials we get are not the flatest and have to be held down. Our material we procure is not 12 x 20. A 60" x 60" sheet of baltic birch yields 15 sheets measuring less than 20 and less than 12 because of the saw blade width.
If you have the Pro model, you can use every bit of the material…just rotate your design 90°, and feed it through the slot. (It’s one of the major bennies of the Pro. No waste.)
You’re speaking theoretically, I am speaking from experience. Trust me when I say that the camera is not adequate for the kind of precision we’re talking about here.
That’s not true. If you take the shipping box measurements & the weight, you’ll find that it is currently at the maximum allowed without turning into truck freight (at least in the U.S. with UPS & FedEx). Making the GF physically bigger would either require less padding in the shipping box or switching to freight shipping - both have substantial downsides.
I’d love it to be 12x24 but then I’d love it if my oven was 2" deeper so I could put two sheet pans in next to each other and make twice as many cookies at once (& recipes should be scaled by sheet pan size vs # of cookies so I don’t have a last batch with just 3 cookies on the pan wasting all the electricity to bake those last 3 ).
Keep in mind that 19 x 5 = 95 and 8 feet is 96 inches and a quarter inch kerf x 4 cuts gives you the added inch.
I have a pro and when buying plywood have it cut exactly so. With basic I would cut most pieces at 9x19 as that will do for most things and a wider piece at the bottom. That will make 25 pieces per big sheet.
Currently with the 12 x 20 material in place the camera is definitely not aadequate. I agree. What I meant was that the margins as we see it now should not be there at all. I can fit parts right to edge if I was allowed to and use less overall wood for a larger project.
The camera is not adequate for even the centered parts that I place so I can put an image on it. There are time when the image is off to the left or right or to the top by as much as 1/4". I have done 4 flasks back to back and using a jig setup have to make many adjustments to repeat the process. It is a good feature but it has its days of frustration.
I’d recommend you actually do a cost analysis here (if you haven’t already) to see how much money you’re talking about. When I did it, I realized I was getting riled about literal pennies. There is a definite breakpoint where its just not worth the hassle.
Of course the cost per square inch of material can vary widely, but even the high end of my costs was still really low.
Take baltic birch plywood, which I get for about $9 for a 5’x5’ piece. That works out to a quarter penny per square inch. So if I lose a 2" x 12" strip, that’s only 6 cents (!).
Now lets go with a higher end material: 1/8" cast acrylic from estreet, 12x24" for $6.35. That’s 2.2 cents per square inch. Losing that 2x12 strip is only about fifty cents.
Heck losing that entire 12x4" strip is still under a dollar. (of course that’s a nice scrap and can be used on other stuff, so that’s not a true loss.)
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