Someone with a good band-saw and planer setup could do very well if they got good wholesale prices turning 8/4 lumber into the range the GF could handle. You would not be able to waste money shipping it a bunch of times back and forth across the country, but hand picking the wood at that point would help a lot.
All wood will char when you try and cut 1/2". The big question is how well it stands up to the charring. Paduk stands up the best in my testing but I would plan on sanding off 0.1 from the sides unless you want to leave it black.
Do you have a Pro? or is that maple especially tough? At 100 speed full power you should have cut most of the way through. Looking at my tests even the 120 speed made it through the 0,368 and the 100 had flashback all with the focal length at 0.368
Sacrificing 1/2 to one inch off the end of each board and keeping the result as a reference helps a lot even in identifying that two boards are the same or different when they look the same or different. I have been surprised both directions.