I’m trying to cut out some trays that I made on Maker Case. I’m not using proof grade material, I’m using some 5mm thick plywood. I have it set to cut, using settings I found in the posted spreadsheet for non-proof grade materials but it isn’t cutting. I have even done a second pass and it still doesn’t come close to cutting, there are no marks on the underside. What am I doing wrong? I cleaned the lenses just the other day.
I’m going to move this over to Beyond the Manual, since Support can’t help you with non-proofgrade materials. (Posting in Problems and Support opens a support ticket.)
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There. Now that we’re in the correct place – plywood can be very unreliable. I’ve never had any luck with plain old plywood, actually. It can contain glues that aren’t laserable, knots, voids, and all kinds of stuff. You need to stick to high-grade plywood like Baltic birch (which still isn’t totally fail-proof), or plywoods specifically marketed for laser use. Home Depot has a line of those now; I think they will actually come up if you put “Glowforge” in as a search term.
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Also, those settings that you find for non Proofgrade material on various spreadsheets can be quite unreliable, since they depend on another person’s experience with material that may vary from what you have. You will definitely need to test your settings and adjust speed and power to get optimal results on your material.
do you have a strong flashlight you can hold up behind the sheet where it is NOT cutting? if there are filled voids you will likely see a shadow where a knot was filled in.
I got 3 sheets of MDF core hardwood plywood from Menards last week to run through Beamer. Hopefully it will work as anticipated.
Maple and Oak.
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A screenshot of the settings you are using would help out.
This is from Home Depot, it’s only 5mm thick. I’ll see if I can pull it up in the GF search.
I don’t see where you’ve said what settings you are using.
I work with 5mm (it’s meant to be 3/16", but is actually 0.19") Birch plywood from the big box store all the time. It’s my most used material after Proofgrade…
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That is WAY too fast.
I use 145/FULL on my Pro for Lauan ply.
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This is a Birch plywood from Home Depot. I just posted the settings. S-500 P-full, 1 pass and .197 is the focus height
Yeah like @eflyguy said way too fast. for my 5mm plywood i use 165 speed/ full power. If you look in the free designs section there are lots of free test templates for cutting speeds. so you can test to see what speed is best for your material.
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That is what I use for EVA foam. Plywood is much more dense.
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