Medium proof grade not cutting all the way through

Hello! For some reason my glow forge won’t cut all the way through my medium clear acrylic. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Can someone help me please.

Hi, first question/check any time a material doesn’t cut through that has before is if the board is flat.

Do you pin it down? And cutting can change the internal stresses of the board, so even if it was perfectly flat at the start, as you cut some items out, it may not remain flat–so if you can, put pins on the edges of areas you have already cut out, too.

And I’ve found sometimes acrylic splatter gets onto my lens, so if it starts out OK, but next cuts not so good, be sure to check for residue/debris.

And if it’s longer periods of time between when it cuts thru and not, humidity will affect the laser’s effective power itself, so you may just want to slow down the speed by 10-20 points, or just set up 2 cutting passes.

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  1. Clean the lenses and mirrors – ALL of them: https://glowforge.com/support/topic/cleaning-service-and-moving/cleaning#things-that-need-wiping

  2. Fasten your material down solidly to the bed of the printer. Even if you have a miraculous piece of material that is actually completely flat (highly improbable with anything the Glowforge can cut), the first cut in its surface is going to change internal stresses and make it not flat.

  3. Make sure the correct material is selected (upper left corner of the app screen) and that you’ve got the correct settings selected.

  4. Use the Set Focus tool to make sure your material height is set exactly for the area where you’re cutting.

If you still can’t get it to cut through, then cut the Gift of Good Measure on PG draftboard and post photos here of the front and back for Support to take a look at. It might be helpful for you to include the date, time, and timezone of the print, so they can look at the logs, too.

Good luck!

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we Are talking default settings always in P&S. But you could go manual and drop speed down 5.

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Thank you! One last question… how do you fasten your material?

Magnets can work, but if they’re too strong they can stop the air assist fan.

If you’re using a full sheet of PG, taping it to the front and side edges of the tray will help.

Most of us use these: Honeycomb bed holdown pins But of course you need to be able to cut through materials in order to make them, so it might be kind of a catch-22 if the cleaning and focusing steps don’t help. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Keep us posted!

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ok! Let me see if I can make this happen. Thank you!

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I’m so sorry to hear that you’re running into trouble.

The individual instructions and guidance @bansai8creations and @geek2nurse provided are great first steps.

Once you have reviewed these steps, could you let me know if you’re still hitting the same snag?

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.