This is always happening randomly and it’s beginning to be frustrating with the high price of wood at the moment!! It looks fine and then when I flip it over after doing 2 bypasses and it being at max power and slowed down.
How do I prevent this from continuing to happen? I’m half tempted to get another brand because of this 
It’s the wood. There are knots or glue plugs within the plywood that take way more laser energy to penetrate than the rest of the wood does. You can try shining a bright light through the plywood to see if you can locate and mark these denser areas so you can avoid them. Or use Proofgrade.
That makes so much more sense! Thank Goodness!!! Thank you soooooo much!!!
Ditto what they said - it’s the wood - BUT
Let me add to your workflow to try and save you on some of these. When your cut is done you should reach in and remove the cut pieces while your base is still held down by whatever you’re using (honeycomb hold down pins being the gold standard).
That way you know automatically if a piece hasn’t cut and you can close the lid and run another cut line in the area that missed.
Now in the case of voids, it may not matter since the glue they use often won’t ever cut, but it gives you a chance!
On pieces you’ve already pulled I find that you can often cut the tiny lines with an xacto blade. It’s worth a shot in any case since otherwise the cut is a total waste.
I’ve had this happen enough I always do what @deirdrebeth explained. It’s saved a lot of projects!
A new laser will not help the wood. Many woods and especially plywood will have different densities, or laser resistant glue that will cause that problem, Some are worse than others… If you fasten the material down and try and lift the material out (I use a vacuum cleaner hose,) And then if it does not budge and you have not moved the material you can make another cut. If there is a bit of “almost got it” I get the bad spots with an xacto knife.
I’m so glad you posted this, because I never even thought of shining a light through to locate the glue spots, first. Murphy’s Law, the bad glue spots always seem to happen with larger pieces of wood and or something with a lot of engraving. When I come across bad spots that didn’t cut all the way through, sometimes I try and just carefully “break away” the piece of wood and then sand it off with a grinder. Heavy duty sandpaper doesn’t seem to work on these glue spots, but if hit it with the grinder and then finish smoothing it out with sandpaper, sometimes I get lucky.
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