I’m going to go ahead and say that I am wrong on the batch info. I was positive that several of the 1/8" Maple Plywood received with the unit were identical and others had different QR codes. But I just went and looked at all of the material I currently have and each one has a different QR code. If it was by batch you could assume I would have a few that were identical. The first few identifying letters are the same for a material type but the last 3 are different for every piece even for the same material. So material type seems to be included but maybe each piece has it’s own letter identifier.
3 Likes
BTW: Should have trusted @karaelena 's post. The gantry moved back dragging my material with it in the middle of a large engrave. The magnets didn’t jump off the piece but found that sweet spot where the friction between magnet and material was greater than that of the crumb grid.
6 Likes
Baseless rumour humour: It’s so Glowforge knows if you’ve used a piece of wood, so that you can’t reuse it again after it’s cut out. It’s DRM for wood. 
12 Likes
You would think an identifier for material and batch would make more sense than a different code for each and every piece of material.
FYI: I won’t say that I have used the QR label from one piece to use over and over.
8 Likes
It’s actually easier to do it per piece of wood. They can associate it with a batch on the backend. It’s extraneous info to have on the label itself.
The only time things like batch# are really useful is when it’s a code meant to be read by humans directly
3 Likes
Well, in reality, it probably is an individually serialized piece of material. If that’s true then it just indicates a desire to keep a very close eye on quality, not just from the Proofgrade manufacturers but through their warehouse supply chain. You can keep batch information, but if you’re trying to figure if the wood has been stored properly before distribution (say, a pile gets wet, ruining some of it), it’ll get expensive to do a recall on an entire pallet.
1 Like
Once you’re doing serialization with printers that can make every piece different, it’s probably just as easy to do it that way.
3 Likes
Yes! @takitus was mentioning the difficulty of position the laser relative to the position of the jig. So I suggested that using a QR code to store the coordinates and starting point of the jig as reference for the print job. That way you could place the jig anywhere in the bed and have the pieces aligned properly to the job. The information would be specific to the jig.
5 Likes
Very impressive, easy to understand. Thank you so much! Basic question, what kind of masking paper did you used?
Thank you
What thickness plywood did they use for these invitations, if you remember?
1/8
Speaking of which: a guy stopped by and discussed Glowforge capabilities. He thought it would be great for his machine shop to engrave the anodized aluminum part identification tags they attach to their parts. Deal killer: not having a serial/sequencer function that would add automatically the tag id number. SUre you can bypass with merge and templates, but that would be a bit more complicated. Interesting use case thought for the hopper.
7 Likes
I’ll bet there is a turnkey solution out there, I just don’t know about it.
It would be really easy to run an svg through a script that did the right thing. A good python programmer could type that out in a few minutes. (The main design decision would be whether to store the current top number in the file or elsewhere.)
3 Likes
That looks a lot like the tacky paper that you get for transferring cut vinyl. So you could also try searching for Vinyl cutter transfer tape. Obviosuly you want the paper version as there is a plastic film version too 
Hello and thank you for your wonderful tutorial.
I would like to find masking material but I can not find a large roll like you. Can you tell me where you find this masking tape?
Searching for “masking”, like this;
https://community.glowforge.com/search?context=topic&context_id=6584&q=Masking&skip_context=true
Will find this thread:
https://community.glowforge.com/t/masking-material-for-non-proofgrade-items/22442
2 Likes
Do you have a link to Dan’s “hack” to make a jig that makes a hole for the cutting area??? I can’t seem to find it on this thread.
Thanks for sharing. Do you have a link to Dan’s “hack” to make a jig that makes a hole for the cutting area??? I can’t seem to find it on this thread.