I. Love. Those. I’ve made at least 20 of them 
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I wish it were that, but I use the pins all the time. Acrylic is the only material I’ve been able to use that doesn’t require a power change. As soon as I get home tonight, I’ll update with photos of my gimbal mirror for you @jaz and thank you for following up with me.
I wonder if the humidity makes wood need significantly more power to cut but doesn’t affect acrylic much. Acrylic does absorb water but nowhere near as much as wood does. It stands to reason you need extra energy to boil off the water before you can burn wood. If you ever try to light a fire with damp wood that becomes obvious.
Not a bad point…the humidity might be causing some swelling as well as warping. (The joys of living in a tropical climate.) 
Ask and you shall receive:
In case the direct link doesn’t work;
Note: that test was for paper, but should be somewhat consistent with wood. I don’t know about saturation rates - wood will, I believe, absorb less water as a percentage of its mass. You usually see numbers range from around 10 to 30% here, I believe. I’m no expert - just have read a bit.
Well that’s pretty clear. Thanks!
Looks like there needs to be somewhere to declare the RH where you store your materials to the GFUI so it can compensate.
That sounds like a nightmare.
Yes but the concept of PG that is guaranteed to work with the same settings on thousands of machines with differing age tubes, in different environments and naturally varying materials seems like a nightmare to me. Nice idea but every day somebody reports it doesn’t work.
Sounds like they need to specify more parameters to me. Huge swings in temp aren’t good. Huge swings in humidity aren’t good either.
Seems like simple parameters on PG would be easy to specify. Keep humidity relatively stable and between X-min and X-max. Outside of that, we can’t guarantee the experience.
Or maybe they should build a scale into the crumbtray that weighs the piece, subtracting cutout areas to determine water weight and just be a magic machine.
@palmercr @jbmanning5 It had occurred to me at one point that the humidity may be affecting the wood, but this didn’t happen with my original machine, and it was much more humid then than it is now. I’ve used both proofgrade from orders before I received this machine, and after as recently as a month ago.
Another snag with the theory is that the finished medium premium woods would be resistant to any absorbing natures the core would have especially towards the center of the board. The problem has presented itself not necessarily uniformly, but throughout an entire board whether near the edge or toward center. I’ve measured multiple draftboard pieces and they are consistent within .001-2" which is less than a piece of sticky note paper of which I measured .004". When cutting I’m getting at least a variation of .01" in some areas.
@jaz The mirror was hard to picture, but here are those as well as my second test cut at roughly 8:14am Hawaiian time on April 4
One thing I noticed is that the perforation it creates has a sort of warble in it, not sure if that’s any indication as I would assume the laser may not be a perfect beam, but this cut was even worse than the first test done the other day.
Also, I’ve had a meter (cheap, but gives me readings)
I just moved it from next to my window to the shelves I keep my materials on. It’s dropped 2%, but I don’t believe it will get lower than 80%.
They already have a temperature range that is difficult / inconvenient for a lot of people to maintain in a domestic setting. If they add a tight humidity range as well it starts to be the most finicky laser cutter on the market.
I wonder how long wood takes to absorb moisture. @raymondking32, did you have the first machine long enough for the materials to be affected by your climate?
I’d say so. I had it for about as long as this one. It’s like I said, I’ve used material from both “time periods”. The only wood I’ve yet to try is the hardwood of which I don’t have much of because the humidity affects that by giving a decent amount of bow, whereas the rest of the woods I’ve used are weighed down by each other on flat surfaces, and while in the machine I will tend to use the honeycomb pins mentioned by Jules.
Nice as the humidity theory might sound, I don’t buy it as a real issue. Been lasering stuff for years in everything from bone dry to “rain would be less humid” weather and not noticed an impact. Flat I’ve noticed and if humid = warped, I’d point to that but you’ve eliminated that problem. It just seems that you’re getting inconsistent power delivery and that’s a machine or software issue.
It was the fact that acrylic cuts OK but wood doesn’t that pointed to humidity. It could just be the PG settings for acrylic have a bigger margin than wood.
Bet it’s that because with wood they’re trying to get “toast” and not “burned” edges. Cast acrylic can take more over powering before it gets melty.
This is what I figured as well. When I turn the speed down to get a consistent cut, it gets really ashy and burnt.
Unfortunately, it looks like your unit is experiencing an issue that we can’t resolve remotely. I want you to have a reliable unit, so I’m recommending we replace this one. I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details. I’m so sorry about the bad news.
