machine will not cut through 1/4 in maple. I have cut the same file and now it will not cut. This is not the first time it has happened.
Is this the 1/4" Proofgrade maple plywood? How close to cutting through is it?
not proofgrade, you can see the cut on the bottom, but does not go completely through, sometimes only dots
Support will not offer assistance with non proofgrade material. They will undoubtedly want you to cut the Gift of Good Measure on Proofgrade material using Proofgrade settings. If that doesn’t cut through you will need to post pictures front and back and note the date and time of the cut.
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It’s most likely your material. Non-PG materials aren’t manufactured to standards that account for lasering. Plywood is notorious for being a PITA to laser - voids, glues and other non-laserable stuff gets bonded into the layers. You need to either test each sheet or jack up your power (or slow down the speed) until you get reliable results.
You can see if there’s something bad in the interior of the plywood by placing a high wattage light (high lumen LED lights are good) against the back and moving the plywood around. You’ll see any voids or other problem areas as shadows on the surface.
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In addition to @jamesdhatch ’s great advice, if this is material you’ve successfully cut before it sounds like your optics need cleaning.
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Since this is not Proofgrade we can’t discuss settings in Problems and Support so I am going to move this to Beyond the Manual to continue the discussion.
Edit: Wrong location first move. Sorry!
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Chances are either your machine needs a good cleaning (follow the instructions in the support tab) or the wood (presumably it’s maple ply and not maple wood) isn’t a great quality. Or both.
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Hi @lisa.mendoza3 I’m sorry to hear that you’ve run into some trouble cutting through some 1/4" maple wood. It looks like you’ve been getting some great advice from fellow Glowforge owners regarding prints on non-Proofgrade material. To rule out any potential technical issues contributing to cut trouble, feel free to try running our Gift of Good Measure test print using the steps from the link below:
https://support.glowforge.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033633374-1-Gift-of-Good-Measure
If that fails to cut through using Proofgrade material, go ahead and take photos of the front and back of the material, and attach them to any response. I can review that for any further troubleshooting needed. Thank you!
I lowered the speed to get it to cut, which it is now, but I am having a lot of cooling down stops now.
Lisa Mendoza
On Jul 31, 2021, at 3:01 PM, Glowforge <support@glowforge.zendesk.com> wrote:
Hi @lisa.mendoza3 - I’m sorry to hear about the cooling trouble!
I want to make sure we look into this for you, and that this doesn’t get overlooked. As this forum ticket was opened for a bit of a separate issue, and isn’t in our support section anymore, I’m going to reach out to you via email so that this issue can be properly tracked in a ticket and we can get this all sorted.