Oooh no way you think that’ll work? Come on, no offense, but that’s just silly.
Almost as silly as someone who thinks dust and smoke residue buildup won’t affect the transmission of a laser light that is focused by a lens.
But it’s usually necessary to clean the two mirrors as well. One is in the path of a lot of exhaust air carrying that dirty smoke.
That might be why GF publishes a cleaning process and timeline (although that has proven to be woefully inadequate for most users).
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Sarcasm is beyond you clearly! You mean a focused laser beam needs to go through clean lenses?!? Wow! You two are both so helpful. Thanks, really
I’ve followed every cleaning guide to the t, since I got my machine. It’s immaculate. But hey, thankfully you and deirdrebeth are both here to tell people to “clean your lens”
Good info. Would have helped rule things out. Do a search, you’d be surprised how many people don’t even know there are two mirrors and have never cleaned the left one.
But since you were hijacking someone else’s thread (& one about an entirely different issue), I expect we’re all better off to leave you to your own devices and let this message sequence die off since we’re obviously no help to you.
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Actually, I didn’t hijack anything.the OP was about cutting through thick material. Someone else said they had success and then troubles as well, like myself. My post was an addition, as in stating I had the same issue. I wasn’t looking for troubleshooting from anyone, as I’ve already done that to no avail. Did I say, “why isn’t this working?”. No. But again,thanks for ALL your help.
Anytime 
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I found the matrix but nothing that mentions thickness. Maybe I missed it? Where is it?
Can someone point me in the right direction? The glowforge spec says up to 2 inches… but what i’m reading here is that it’s not possible.
What’s the verdict?
I just spent a few trial and error hours cutting 0.76 inch thick pine. I finally got some really good results. I Removed the crumb tray and propped the piece up so the top was sitting .3 inches above where the surface of the crumb tray would be. I set the laser focus to zero and set the speed to 140 and full power with 3 passes. Cut through several pieces with these settings today with good results except for a particularly dense knot in the pine That didn’t get cut completely. Minimal charring.
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The spec says you can work on materials that are up to 2" thick - it never says you can cut through anything that thick. Now, a number of folks on here have found you can actually do thicker materials, but in every case it’s involved some serious trial and error. The “verdict” is, it depends - on the material, and your desire to spend the time to figure out what works on the material you’re trying to cut through.
The Matrix is here: https://community.glowforge.com/t/community-glowforge-tutorials-table-of-contents/, it links to many many posts in the forum. I do not believe any of those links are specifically for thick material. You can start with the settings in this thread - but unless your piece of material is identical to @melissa3’s it’s not likely to work exactly the same - so you’ll need to test.
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