Additionally, the majority of that comes from dropping the laser power to the absolutely minimum you need to keep it from discoloring too much; the air assist “only” keeps the smoke and soot from depositing too much.
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Yes but the increased air flow allows a lower power or faster speed because it removes the smoke faster.
At the end he was getting clean edges with no charring at all.
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Yes, I watched the video, but my point stands. Additionally, it’ll be easier to clean off blackening from soot vs blackening from actual char, which makes the laser settings much more impactful vs more forceful air assist.
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Funny how two people can watch the same video and reach a different conclusion. At the start he found the point where he could just cut through and it had a charred edge. At the end, with a much better air flow, he could cut the same depth faster and with no charring: https://youtu.be/OCVsMXw6yh4?list=LLrWYB-vG-BSYU1BKLTi2aYQ&t=1323
So with a high pressure air assist you can cut wood deeper or to same depth with less charring, not just less soot to wipe off. In another video he showed for acrylic you want minimal airflow to get a nice flame polished edge.
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Yeah, I mostly mean that it’ll be a difference between char and soot, not that it won’t be dark at all; one’s a lot easier to remove, the other requires sanding…
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Love seeing everything that you’re sharing! Keep it coming.
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I agree that the camera will be nice, but I’ve always created an Illustrator file for each workpiece that I had (for instance, one file for the blue acrylic 12"x12", and another for the red acrylic 12"x12"). I would work on my cut paths in a separate file, copy and paste them over to the workpiece file, and place them where I hadn’t cut something out already!
This worked great, and the workpiece file reminded me what orientation I needed to put the workpiece in and the laser had it’s machine coordinates so I could always set the origin to the same spot each time.
Granted, you had to convert the old work to thicker lines so they wouldn’t be cut, and make sure to update the workpiece files…
…yeah, that camera feature will be nice! 
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I use layers in a single file for that except I think I saw somewhere that Dan said they ignore layers in files being sent and treat them all as one. I’m going to have to adjust my workflow I think.
he also said that it ignores layers that have been turned off. Not sure about sub-layers.
Good question to check out. Turn off a layer and import it and see if it says ignore or cut engrave score. I design the brooch with layers but imported them All turned on.
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Thank you so much for doing this extra work and sharing with us! It means a lot.
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Can the rulers be configured to be metric?
The catalog ruler has raster tick marks and numerals and text. so those are all set. It’s imperial. I made a point about metric in the video and a kind Canadian sent me a file of a metric ruler. It was great. He knocked off the text by putting museo a similar to Glowforge logo font. Unfortunately, it was off a bit because of some file translastions between his programs and my programs. I have to look at Inkscape’s settings and see if I can change the defaults to play better with other versions of SVG. Someone suggested I learn how to interpret the text file which really makes it up. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
At the moment there seems to be no way to download a file of the design to manipulate it. In the placement window, you can resize and rotate but not at the moment say click on a file and add text or more. You can always add more raster images to the design, such as I did. The scanning feature is the way to add more lines or engravings. And I’m stopping because it’s late.
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Sorry for the confusion. I meant the UI vertical and horizontal rulers 
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You can see how much I have paid attention to the rulers on the screen so far. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what system they were in.
That is a great question. I have not found a place to convert it to metric. I’ll investigate further.
Edit: request for a metric set of graduations and numbers to be added to the ruler file for printing the other side. I demoed that this is feasible. I can understand why it isn’t there yet because flipping over and doing the reverse is work in progress, but definitely usable in most of the cases I’m coming up with.
As to metric for the work area?..?
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Add a Snap to that and you’ve got something with some really practical use.
- Tom
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Wonder what happens if you switch your mobile browser to Desktop Mode?
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Yes, I read that, too. But I think, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that, while it will ignore layers, separate graphical elements will be treated individually and will be selectable in order to change to cut, engrave, or score.
- Tom
That is correct.
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