Help with cutting into Oak

[crewswoodcrafts]

Hi Everyone, I really hope you can help this Scots man. I am trying to cut a Celtic symbol into 3/4” oak and the cutting lines appear to be too thick and are also scorching. When I try the same logo out using proofgrade material it works brilliantly. Do I need to remove the honeycomb and make the top of my oak the same level as if it was proof grade material that I was using or can I alter the focus height setting in the software? Is there settings you could provide me to get me started? I am just starting out with my Glowforge and could really do with some advice? I hope some of you experts can help me. Thank you and take care.

[Jules]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Yes, that’s exactly right, you will need to remove the tray, and then prop the oak onto something to bring the top surface of it up into correct focus range…it’s actually dangerous to try to use 3/4" thick material on top of the tray.

There are a couple of tutorials on how to do it here:

Publish or Perish D6 Die

These were sourced on Amazon: http://a.co/ceqOmch I specifically went with the 25mm (1 inch) dice for increased visability and “real estate” for engraving. They are cheaper in bulk, but as this was an initial test for a limited run, I thought it was a reasonable deal. Btw, since these are > 0.5", the crumb tray must be removed, so there’s a bit of math needed to get the engraving face back into the focus zone as well as setting the exact focus distance. It took a few ceramic tiles I had hand…

Tutorial: How to cut without the Crumb Tray (Honeycomb)

Tutorial: How to cut objects too thick to have the honeycomb in place The GlowForge has a maximum material thickness it can cut through, but there is a maximum thickness you can even put on the honeycomb (crumb tray) even if you are surface engraving as the laser has a limited focus range of 0.01" - 0.4" *** above the surface of the honeycomb at the time of this tutorial. But let’s say you wanted to engrave something thicker that fits quite nicely inside the GlowForge but not with the crumb tray…

Tray Removed - Calculator - Updated

After seeing a couple of people talking about the correct way to do this I made a calculator to simplify the process and hopefully demonstrate the goal. All you need to do is add the height of your object and the base you want to use and it will tell you if it will work or not and the setting to use in the GF, if it won’t work it will tell you why. If you don’t have a base in mind just put 0 and it will give you the minimum needed. [image] Zip file TrayCalculator3.xlsx (33.8 KB) Dropbox in …

[pubultrastar]

I recommend getting something like this:

Risers to Make Lasering Thick Materials EASY

GlowforgeStandoffs.zip (103.4 KB) OK, this should work correctly. You just need to put in the tray height, the clearance of your Glowforge, and the number of clearance steps (0,1,2)

[newbies_234]

I may be biased but I feel the tray removed calculator is the best.