Cutting and Engraving on 1/4 inch basswood

Hello. So I have been cutting 1/4 basswood at 170/full power with a focus height of .25" and 2 passes. It was working perfectly then today it suddenly stopped cutting all the way through.
I Also added a picture to engrave, I used SD with a focus height of .25" and not only is it about an inch off, it’s barely visible.
I feel sure the answers are ridiculously obvious but I’m just not experienced enough yet to figure it out
Thanks in advance.

Have you cleaned your machine lenses?

I cleaned the entire machine about 2 weeks ago. I guess I have been using it a lot more lately… I have the time… I’ll try cleaning all the lenses again.
Thanks

That sounds pretty hot. I see I have 140 and one pass for quarter inch poplar and 200 one pass for 1/8 basswood but a change like that would indicate some issues.

A common case particularly with engraves is that the settings fall to top speed and one power doing almost nothing, but better than burning the house up. If you typed in 25 and not 0.25 it will default to 0,5 and use that to see where the piece is which may be an inch off.

However cleaning the two windows, lens (put back cup side up) and mirror, It is amazing how little fog can have such a big result in the cutting.

There are other possibilities but a cell phone photo uploaded here will help sort those out.

Support will ask you to print the Gift of Good Measure on the spare medium draftboard provided with the machine, using the default settings, and post pictures of the result from the front and back.

They might also ask for pictures of the optics, as seen here.

This information will help determine if there is in fact a problem with the machine.

I would use set focus myself. Perhaps this material thickness is off?

Hi guys. I cleaned the machine and double checked the wood depth. I adjusted accordingly and it seems to be working. Sorry to be annoying. I spent hours trying to figure it out and get frustrated. Thanks for heling me work through it.

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I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve hit this snag, but I appreciate you working so hard to narrow down the trouble. I’m glad that these steps helped resolved the behavior you were seeing.

I’ll close this thread for now, but please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@glowforge.com if you run into any of the same trouble. We’re here to help!