How deep (thick) will the glowforge cut? Is there a link to a list of all the details.
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It depends on the material. Most materials like wood and acrylic at least up to 1/4" and some to 1/2".
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Here is a link to the system specs https://glowforge.com/tech-specs but, from my research online (depending on the material used) most 45w lasers tend to cut no more than 1/4" now that being said I recall something in one of the GF vids around launch saying two sided cutting may be able to produce a maximum cut of 1/2"
It is very dependent on the material. I cut through a 0.5" soft pine molding quite easily.
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I think the GF does a little better than most CO2 lasers of the same wattage because it has a very well focused beam.
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As others have stated, it depends on the material. But I’ll say this… I was able to get a 1/3" engrave last week in a block of 3/4" wood (of unknown species). In a single pass even. I haven’t tried a cut that deep, however, but clearly the power is there.
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Depends upon density of material and type of material and whether or not you have a Basic or Pro.
I cut 1/4" walnut hardwood with one pass. I can’t cut 1/4" mahogany in three passes without an ugly kerf. I cut 1/2" acrylic in two passes.
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Have you tried the new “Full Power” yet? Seems that the old 100% was doing pretty well for a 40W laser and “Full Power” is stated to be higher.
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Not sure how to interpret the Full Power announcement from Dan. On the machine I have there is a major difference between 99% and 100% on a cut but the 100% seems to be no different than before. So on this PRU it seems to have just opened up a far greater control of engrave settings. Now it may be completely different on the Production units and may increase the high end. Seems to suggest that there are differences in that area.
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What @rpegg said. Cutting at 100% works like before. Haven’t done other tests. Will try to test this. Haven’t event tried paper yet.
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Yes the wording is confusing. It talks about 1-99 and 100 being special but the GUI mockup shows 1-100 and then full power being out on its own.
And Dan said he didn’t know the relationship between the new and the old settings. Since they have gone we can’t even measure them.
The wording implied Full power was more than was available before but it isn’t clear whether the PRU machines work the same as the production machines, albeit with less accuracy, or have their own scale.
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I kept looking for that image in the GFUI and it isn’t there. Looks like before.
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If there is a now a big gap between 99 and 100, but 100 is the same power as before presumably that means you have lost some of the high end control, which would be odd.
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Is your Pre-Release Unit on the same software/firmware as the Production Units?
Does the Pre-Release Unit have a different firmware track?
I’m not sure how that works out. When the low power got pushed for the little bit the other month it worked great at low power and then lost it.
Understand what you are saying.
Not sure what, if any, in the way of control I might have lost since never cut anything between 85% and 100%. Always advised to use the 100% and adjust speed as necessary for most cuts. Since we didn’t have low power before it was the only way to go. Just know I’m happier with the current methodology.
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Yes low power is definitely a lot more useful than small variations at the top end but it is odd it can’t be both with perhaps two ranges if the PSU works like that. The very low power might be PWM for example.
If the hardware could do a particular power the day before yesterday then it should still be able to do it today as the only change is software / firmware.
For example, one would normally cut at full power and increase the speed until it just cuts through. If you hit the max speed then you need to throttle back the power but if the next step down is a lot less (by an undisclosed amount) then you have to start again at 99% and reduce the speed by an inestimable amount.
This is why I argue for a table or graph that shows the mapping to watts. So that one can make speed / power trade off judgements.
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Thank you all for your replies! Starting to get excited!!