Followed your instructions, thoroughly cleaned everything again, ran the gift of good measure. note: i do not have any proof-grade material but instead ran a clear 1/4 acrylic from e-street plastics.
also note, the laser lens is new but getting that same result from the old lens as well.
The gift of good measure ran. Everything is aligned but it did not cut and the engraving is light.
ran another piece of wood to see how it looks.
is there anything you can do on your end to increase the strength?