My machine is not cutting consistently nor cutting all the way through. The first cut of the day I can cut my 1/8” Baltic birch ply at 180 speed/ full power .125 focus height. As the day goes on the laser power gets less and less. I end up having to cut at settings 135/full power after about an hour or two of cutting. I have cleaned everything meticulously, my boards are flat… I’m not sure what to do. I need my laser to cut all day a couple days a week and it looses its steam so fast and then I have to exacto knife my orders out. It’s very time consuming and frustrating. Suggestions?
That’s definitely not typical behavior. Support is probably going to ask you to cut a Gift of Good Measure (available in your UI) and tell them exactly when so they can look at the logs. Based on your description I’d cut one early in the day (and note the time) and then again when the laser starts getting weak (and note the time) - take photos of the front and the backs of both and post all of that here so they can jump right in as soon as they see this!
Good luck!
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Great idea! Thank you, I’m going to go cut one right now and run my machine for a few hours. Thanks!
I know you said you cleaned everything, but if you aren’t using the GF guidelines, double check that you’re getting all the mirrors/lenses:
It’s easy to miss stuff!
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I’m so sorry your prints aren’t turning out the way you expected. Thanks for the help in this thread, everyone.
Could you please try the test cut that @deirdrebeth mentioned?
We included an extra piece of Proofgrade Draftboard with your materials shipment for troubleshooting. Please print the Gift of Good Measure on Proofgrade Draftboard and let us know the result. If it doesn’t print well, please let us know the date and time of your print and send photos of the front and back of the print.
You mentioned that the performance of your Glowforge seems to change throughout the day. If you’re still having this issue, please perform this test twice. Once early in the day, and once later in the day when you notice the issue starts happening. Once we have those details, we’ll be happy to take a closer look.
Thanks in advance!
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I haven’t cut on draftboard for awhile. But I cleaned all the lenses this morning and cut a good measure and this is how it turned out. It didn’t even come close to cutting through all the way. It was cut with the regular medium draft board settings. Any suggestions?
Thank you for your help!
-Laura
My experience is that there’s “flat” then there’s FLAT. A very common gotcha is that even a visually undetectable warping of the material can cause issues out at the corners. If you tap on your material and hear a click or an hollow sound, it’s not FLAT.
Your best bet is to cut out a dozen or so Honeycomb Bed Holddown Pins and use them to make absolutely sure your material is firmly secured. I cut out a few from draftboard scraps leftover from various jobs – you cannot have too many of these. 
My cutting success skyrocketed when I adopted these as part of my workflow.
Best of luck!
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So here are some pictures of my cuts from today. I stopped and cleaned the lenses a couple times today just to be sure there wasn’t anything in the way. I used the flattest boards possible. Even my flat medium draftboard isn’t cutting through all the way. My
crumb tray is sitting right in the dimples with no debris in the way. I am baffled and with 4th quarter and craft shows coming up, I need this machine working top notch and I am exacto knifing every. Single. Piece. Sometimes I get lucky and something will
cut nicely. I don’t change anything. It seems to cut worse throughout the day. On my 1/8” Baltic birch I start at 175/full power .125 and after a few hours I am cutting 135/full power and it still isn’t cutting through properly. I am getting awful smoke marks
on my products that make an extra step for me to sand off so they will accept white paint better. It’s just a huge hassle and I need this to perform. I have emailed in many times about my machine not working right and it obviously is still having problems.
Please help me! 
Thank you for your time!
-Laura
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Thank you! I went through the list and cleaned everything again this morning to make sure I didn’t miss anything. It seemed to work better for the first few cuts. Still not cutting excellent, then went down hill.
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I see you already emailed us about this and I have followed up with your next steps there, so I’m going to close this topic.