Hi! I’m essentially brand new to laser cutting and using my brothers Glowforge cutter. I am trying to cut through half inch Red Oak wood and as this is quite thick I was wondering what settings you would recommend? Thank you and any help is appreciated.
First - have you searched for previous discussions on Oak?
Second - have you read thru the tutorials on working with different materials?
It also might not be a bad idea to go thru the basic training on the machine.
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Hey, welcome to the forum.
I’d recommend the “table saw” setting. 
Half inch will be a nightmare to get through, the glowforge is just not the right tool for that. I don’t even mess with 1/4" really, it’s just not an ideal tool for it.
I’m surprised your brother didn’t give you a crash course… there’s a lot of stuff to read to get ahead of the learning curve here. You might want to dig through all this stuff:
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Good luck with oak. I just did 1/2 in cedar and it was 2 passes using the set focus and full power then 1 more slower full power pass set to 1/4 in. I can’t remember what actual speed I used though for either. My end result was very good. I’m sure the oak will be a lot harder to cut through. It’s always better to do multiple passes to reduce the charring.
My unit is a basic.
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Cedar is like tissue paper compared to oak. My experience with cedar was that it was very easy to cut at 1/8", much easier than other woods.
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Hence my intro…“good luck with oak”.
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Haven’t tried cutting thick oak (0.43") since the pre-release period two years ago. Cut it with Pro power but the cut was truly ugly and charred.
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