Why do I have to specify a material thickness?

Everything Else
1

Just curious why a material thickness needs to be entered. If the machine can auto focus on the material and measure the distance from the laser to the material, why enter a thickness?

2

Set Focus is a relatively recent addition. It used to be necessary to specify the material thickness manually in order to adjust the placement view correctly. Now you can use the Set Focus tool in the Settings icon to determine the thickness for placement purposes, and if you do that, you shouldn’t enter a material thickness.

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3

Thank you for the reply and explanation.

4

My pleasure. :slightly_smiling_face:

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5

Note that Set Focus does not always work still. Some materials, primarily due to color, do not read well with the laser for measurement.

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6

As well as at some point one may want to do more advanced things like making smoother engraves and scores or attempt to force a cut deeper than it otherwise would.

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7

Too true. My understanding is that a defocused beam works great on acrylic. It sucks on anodized aluminum, though.

8

That might explain the issue I am having with the machine giving me a material size error for an ordinary sheet of paper placed on the crumb tray. It does the same thing with a piece of Enduramark coated stainless steel on the crumb tray. Even inputting the material thickness will not permit a print with these items. I have to place a piece of wood on the tray where it won’t interfere with the print, have it focus on that piece of wood, then tell it to print on the paper.

Weird.

9

If inputting a material thickness it is still scanning the material and setting the autofocus. It does the same thing as Set Focus, but Set Focus is generally more accurate than your caliper measurements because it’s measuring distance from the head, rather than you inputting from the tray up.

If you want to bypass autofocus, you need to input material thickness and then set the job focus to a different value than the thickness you entered. For example, material thickness of .002”, focal height of .001”.

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