So I’ve mentioned this concept before but here goes again:
As an economic argument in almost all cases where you’re lasering non-unique materials (I.e., not something like a laptop or your very last little bit of a certain material), it just doesn’t make sense to screw around with super fine placement.
Granted there are cases where you’ll need to do so, but take something like BB ply. I source mine for about a dollar for a full sheet. You’ll need to figure out your own hourly rate, but that entire sheet by itself is worth less than a minute of my time. A 4x4” piece? economically that’s worth literally a few seconds.
Edit: I did the math, my material cost for 4x4” piece of B.B. ply is about 7 cents US. Granted this is simplifying and true cost includes time to procure and dispose and so on, but… seven cents. If I wanted to cut something that was even close, I’d grab a larger piece of scrap or a whole new sheet and be done with it.
Now I’m a New Englander and as such frugality is in my bones, but there are definitely practical limits to how much time you should spend worrying about saving a millimeter of material here, a quarter of an inch there.
And yes one more time: I do understand that there are times where squeezing everything out of your material is important — that’s where jigs come in — I’m just saying that I find that it’s just not needed in the majority of cases. Ymmv.