Issue with severe charring on PG Medium Basswood Plywood

Hello!

I am creating some fairly intricate custom ornaments (your name in a snowflake!). I successfully cut my test ornament yesterday on PG Draftboard - all went well as expected with PG settings (yaaay!).

Today (about 10am PST), I went to cut two (2) more on PG Medium Basswood Plywood using the appropriate PG settings. There was so much char, and I was lucky my machine didn’t catch fire. There is now a ton of soot inside the machine which I plan to clean out (referring to other posts in P&S). I have never had an issue like this and have cut on different types of PG and non-PG material over the years I have owned two different machines. These photos were taken after I removed the pieces which were burnt to a crisp (when I decided to submit a support ticket).


Is the design too intricate for plywood but works on draft board? Any other recommendations for cleaning or settings? Will GF be able to send me a replacement sheet of PG Med Basswood Plywood?

Please advise!

Did you do a cleaning between the two runs and accidentally put the lens back in upside down? To me that looks like classic signs of an upside down lens. Or some other focusing problem.

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I didn’t do anything between runs! I cleaned of the machine and adjusted the crumb tray (now). I’ll do a standard print on PG DB and then the plywood and will report back later today!

I just did two very simple circle cuts on both materials after cleaning and all is working. I’ll have to try the intricute cut on the plywood later today. Maybe it was out of focus. I’ll report back if successful at cutting. Thanks!

Yeah, that sounds like it was way out of focus. Make sure you do a Set Focus on your material before cutting, and hopefully you shouldn’t have a problem.

Oh no, I’m sorry to hear about the trouble with your prints @glowgirl.

I extracted the logs from the print in question, and I am seeing a significantly higher autofocuser measurement than usual.

You mentioned, “Is the design too intricate for plywood but works on draft board?” If you’re printing a design that may be too intricate and lead to charring, discoloration, or material damage, you’ll receive a Printscan error.

Have you ever received one of these errors before?

For our next steps, could you try running Set Focus before the next snowflake print and let me know how it goes?

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