Yes, you can, and no it won’t break the bulb. It’s rare, but there can be bad light bulbs. Have you never had one pop when you screwed it in?
Absolutely have. I typically don’t spend this much on a standard light bulb though 
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Well, me either, but don’t fret about it - Glowforge will replace it. They are fairly complex bulbs and they take a lot of abuse during travel to get to us.
I do have complete confidence in them and the replacement. Looking forward to using it more than 16 minutes Though, if we can take any good from this, it did appear that those settings were the right ones for the slightly thinner (~.121 ish) proofgrade maple that has come out of this recent batch. The ruler came right out and the first 2 of the 5 triangle accents fell right out properly too. The other 3, from the back look like there was intermittent or at least a weakening of power leading up to the failure. The 3rd one only one of the lines cut, the forth half just barely scared the back and then nothing for the rest until the end.
At least I know where to start from next time?!
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The focus motor only steps in 0.0278" units. Above 0.125" it will focus at 0.139" and below it will focus at 0.111"
That gives us 16 possible focus heights : 0.000, 0.028, 0.056, 0.083, 0.111, 0.139, 0.167, 0.195, 0.222, 0.250, 0.278, 0.306, 0.334, 0.361, 0.389, 0.417.
Per Glowforge, those focus capabilities for the unit are sufficient to accomplish its cutting function with materials <= 0.250".
So, essentially you can be within +/- 0.014" of your desired focus, and it should still cut without issue.
A very in-depth discussion can be found here:
The “Material Thickness” setting, however is different. While that is used to set the “default” focus (which is then rounded to the nearer of the 16 possible values), it is most importantly used to de-warp the bed image for better optical alignment.
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I measure everything including PG because it’s been changing pretty often on me. I don’t use PG Draftboard to prototype anymore because the thickness isn’t matching the other materials so tabs and slots need to be rejiggered for each material anyway. (My Christmas reindeer in Cherry had to be resized when I used both Draftboard and Maple.)
I’m looking forward to when they get the manufacturing dialed in and Medium means the same thing across the family of hard stuff (wood, ply, draft and acrylic). Until then I measure everything. I also made the mistake of not rotating my stock so I have pieces from a bunch of orders mixed in with each other so I can’t measure one medium maple ply on the shelf and figure it’s the same as the next one in the stack even though I just got 10 sheets in.
Measure twice. Cut onc. 
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Poor onc is always getting cut up. 
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Thanks so much for your patience.
Unfortunately your unit has a problem we can’t fix remotely. I suggest we proceed with a warranty replacement and I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details.
I’m so sorry for the bad news.