Well done.
1 Like
I can attest that exposure to fumes and burnt things can be hazardous, but less worrisome than you think.
One of my first laser experiences was a former friend’s redsail 80w. In his enclosed garage. He had the back door open to show me how cool the tube looked while it was firing, then I cut cast acrylic for 6 hours. The exhaust could not do it’s job properly sucking that out from the machine with the door wide open.
The smell was bothersome, but I just didn’t understand that it was dangerous. I got so hungry afterwards I ate two double whoppers with cheese, fries, and a chicken sandwich, and after 2 hours later, my eyes were still pretty dialated. After a couple bottles of water and some fresher air I was fine. But during that episode, it could have been confused with just starting to come down with a cold or just long cold exposure(which seemed like more likely possibilities at the time.)
TL;DR: an average adult will survive some glue or acrylic fumes for a few hours… Just might get the munchies afterwards
7 Likes
Some tips as I read through, which you likely figured out for yourself and just didn’t mention in the lovely write-up.
When figuring out your own settings, always aim for “way too light” and allow yourself multiple passes to fix it. Also… test on scrap whenever possible. Cardboard to figure out layout, and similar-ish material to figure out power/speed.
Worst case scenario, the corners which would be trimmed off from the final circle were scrap available to do some small engraves and cuts on.
Masking tape… try to find a 6" roll. Local stores are unlikely to have them, but online it is pretty easy to locate larger rolls. They are a pain to work with, but they remove much of the painful attempts to leave no gap, but also no overlap.
For the inconsistent results… possibly it was due to different levels of moisture in the wood samples. That is unlikely, but not outside the realm of possible. Mostly I am just hoping it is not due to the laser in any way (and it ought not to be)
For cutting and not being certain if it got all the way through… dremel is your friend to finish a cut. But, before you even get to that point. Magnets. Before you remove your piece, line magnets along at least two edges until you are certain you can push the part against the lines of magnets for a perfect return to the exact same original location. (be sure to use strong magnets which won’t move when you try to restore the piece)
Also, you can use strong magnets to hold the part down, and then test the cut by sticking a razorblade into the kerf, and try to pry out the cut portion.
The warping… your wife rocks, and had the exact right answer. Go buy that lady some flowers. Don’t even say it was for this, just have flowers on the counter and don’t explain why. 
8 Likes
It’s not about overcoming exposure and feeling better in the short term though. It’s more about 30 yrs from now when some doctor is explaining that the low-grade constant cough is from some unexplained spots on your lungs. I’m not a particularity over cautious person about these things and I still do some pretty stupid stuff, I just know that exposing your body to toxic/harmful things over the course of your life will have a negative effect on you, maybe even deadly. Of course, 30 years later most people don’t remember all the stupid stuff the exposed themselves too and connect the dots.
5 Likes
Of course if every day, hours a day, average guy would certainly have some issues with long term exposure to fumes and particulates. But if average guy has a few minutes on one or two print jobs, it is very not likely to result in significant consequences.
1 Like
Thanks for the insightful tips!! These are incredibly helpful and I’m copying them over to a quick reference Evernote… Sounds like I’ve really gotta get my magnets sooner rather than later (flowers, too!)—it’s come up several times since I started.
The masking tape I picked up is pretty thin; I tried to buy the thick stuff but they didn’t have it. I saw some 6" blue painters tape, but hadn’t seen anything about it so went with the thinner stuff I knew should be okay… After seeing the guy from @makesomething use it on his perpetual calendar video guess I would’ve been safe with it.
1 Like
I thought I was buying a 4" wide roll of blue painters tape. It was four rolls of 1" wide! Lesson learned.
6 Likes
Good to see it came out as a success.
When working with wood, never forget “apply always on both sides”. If it’s water, glue or other stuff you put on or do to the wood and you do it on one side only, it isn’t a suprise seeing te wood warping.
2 Likes
My only issue with a physical 0,0 is getting the piece aligned perfectly. I’m not sure how easy this would be practically.
I’m not saying this is a better solution, but wondering if sort of ‘snap to’ function in the UI might be an option to resolve this issue. This would allow you to engrave and cut say a coaster, fail to make a clean cut and then re-insert the piece, take the existing cut path and have the UI align the existing cut path along the visible circular cut line. How hard do you think this would be @dan ?
2 Likes
To date, it’s the easiest/best method I’ve found. Why would you think it would be difficult? You push a material into a corner, then you know it’s where it needs to be. Everything else is a guess
3 Likes
Nice job! Glad it all worked out for you! Some nice contrast on that.
When I made my first coaster set my Wife found a roll of cork. Which was pretty cool because I could then cut the cork to whatever size I need for a particular job.
Also, I found out about the overlapping masking tape the hard way myself. Luckily it was just on some test wood. It’s a little surprising how much of an impact that has. I’ve also found it’s surprisingly-easy to push the edges of the masking tape together, though, to not have a gap and not have an overlap.
4 Likes
Yeh, fair point it’s not that hard and it probably covers most use cases. What if the piece you’re cutting from isn’t square e.g. offcuts? Still possible but might occasionally make it harder work… Yes, I’m grasping.
I still think a snap to feature would be more flexible as it’d allow you to place new designs into exist pieces with precision, as well as cover the above use case.
1 Like
The only situation ive run into where thats a problem is with a circle, and generally if its a piece Ive machined elsewhere, ill leave it in its frame with tabs so that I have the ability to keep it oriented properly against the edge of the engraveable area.
the problem is that the alignment via optical isnt always 100% accurate. There are many times when I can use the drag and drop and be fine with it to cut pieces out of scrap, but when you have something that is already made (for example an ipad/laptop and you want to be sure that you are engraving exactly where you should be you either will have to cut a jig, or use a 0,0 setup.
Having a 0,0 setup prevents you from having to cut a jig every single time. I know a lot of people are trying to find ways around that, but its a simple solution to a very common problem that just works. TBH I dont really understand the glowforge stance on not allowing us to do that… =\
5 Likes
I pair a cut version of square that’s 1.5" on the left side and 1" on the bottom. Then I have a 12x20 artboard in Corel with the same square (really an L - a carpenter square) defined but I ignore those lines in the UI. My max physical material size is 18.5x11 but it’s working okay so far.
5 Likes
They would need to change the hardware to have a 0,0 fixed to the bed, so I can see why haven’t done it. They decided a long time ago to home and align with the cameras and have stuck with that decision. Whether it will ever work or not remains to be seen.
1 Like
So should I bear that in mind for when my GF arrives? I had been hoping that if I used non-proofgrade materials (let’s just say 1/8" maple), that I could just pull up the Proofgrade settings for 1/8" maple and use those as a starting off point. Does the GF interface allow me to do that if I don’t actually have Proofgrade materials and the appropriate barcode to tell it what it’s looking at?
2 Likes
At present yes.
That may change so some of us are saving PG stickers 
You can always run a calibration tool project to give you power & engrave settings that will work. I’ve posted a couple of templates and how-to threads in the Made on a Glowforge section.
1 Like
You don’t have to have a QRC on the material or it to be Proofgrade. You can select Proofgrade settings and just let it process on non-Proofgrade. You would want to do this only if it is similar material and similar thickness. I’d say this feature will stick around for a while since at first you couldn’t do it. The forum discussed this option vigorously and then it appeared in the GFUI.
The point I was making was that not only can you pull up Proofgrade settings for non-Proofgrade material, you can convert them to manual settings and the actual numbers come up that you can tweak as desired.
I absolutely lose no sleep over settings these days, nor do I worry about these issues. Granted, I haven’t been doing much this week, but part of that is that I have pretty much all the experience I need with materials and know that it’s fairly simple to arrive at some adequate to perfect settings in a couple minutes with a test piece.
To put it in perspective: most of the discussion about settings have been from folks who have either no experience with a laser to those who have had experience and are used to a workflow that requires lots of patience and tweaking and are doing professional grade work with demanding standards. We are still in the learning phase here and the interface has changed so what may appear at first as a very complicated issue that requires an advanced degree to understand really isn’t that difficult. At least, that’s my read on things.
And I would always be willing to give some helpful but not authoritative advice for some settings if someone posts a good description of the project, the materials, and has demonstrated that they have at least read the manual and done a basic search of the forum for help.
You can get to good enough fairly easily by just familiarizing yourself with the actual numbers behind the Proofgrade settings for the various materials.
7 Likes
I’m pleased that we have access to proofgrade settings. This is a very important and useful feature. We all need to voice our appreciation loud and clear, lest a willy-nilly change in GF policy takes it away in a future “upgrade.”
3 Likes
Probably doesn’t hurt to remind everyone how nice it is. But the discussion was robust regarding this feature and the desire for it. When it appeared, there was much rejoicing. The pre-release folks really reinforced how important this was, and how thankful we are that we get to use it.
6 Likes