In addition to what @Jules said about starting your own ticket, if it worked successfully with the tutorial, are you sure you are giving the laser the right directions to do what you want? I only ask because you said you are a “total laser virgin”. Have you tried just simple vector shapes like squares or circles?
Thanks for letting me know!
It seems really material dependent - the maple plywood just won’t cut through, while the maple hardwood does - but only from time to time, even with the same design. I will start a ticket and see what happens.
Thanks so much!
Wrong vote (fat finger on a tablet). I’ve had no issues since January with that long thread. Whatever fixes GF did via pushes to my machine made it better than it ever was.
BTW, I never worry about perfectly flat material. I don’t throw anything with a lot of warp in the machine in the first place and nothing says good cut like watching the piece fall a mm or so
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You are on the always works side, which seems to be what you are saying. Unfortunately with only 17 votes it’s not a very significant sample. I should have given it its own topic.
Strange some people say hundredth matter but you can get away with a couple of mm, which is more like a tenth. I wonder if there is a big spread in machines. Either the tube power or the focus calibration.
I don’t know. I’ve been watching the conversations over time and I really don’t get why some people are dead set on perfectly flat as the only thing that will cut properly. I think that is the GF “official” recommendation though so I won’t tell anybody not to do it.
I think part of it is that once somebody finds something that works they stick with it no matter what. As you noted, if I’m withing +/- .1 inch it doesn’t make a lot of difference on the thinner materials although habit tells me +/- .03 is better.
The only cutting issues I have now are with non-PG materials where A) filler or glue used affects cuts in small areas on plywood or B) where I’m still dialing in settings on a non-PG material and haven’t got it right yet.
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Yes I think that is more like normal laser experience. I don’t think any other laser manufacturer would say you sheets need to perfectly flat in order to cut reliably. Especially thin sheets that are easily within the capability of the laser.
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You are correct that a small amount of variance makes very little difference in how far a cut penetrates. However, the settings seems to be so conservative that they want the cut to make it through but not make it through anymore than necessary, less flashback, clean cut, etc. If the cut is borderline due to the conservative settings and slight variance between machines, then any variance could cause a failure to penetrate. Went through about 100 test cuts (1" circles) on my PRU to confirm that a very, very slight change in focus was inducing a failure to penetrate.
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I attribute it to the FNL giving CYA advice. And as @rpegg notes just below your response.
Yup, I get that too. They’re still dialing in settings (hence the “beta” tags) and if you don’t match their set-up they can’t take responsibility, etc. On that note though, after having the problem with my machine in January I found an unexpected store credit that covered the material costs so the GF really does take responsibility and they go out of their way to make people happy!
I have one of the early ship models with the now limited edition silver crumb trays. I’m sure there are differences between what I have and later shipping machines.
The PRUs provided a lot of good data. I can’t remember if you had an early or late one, but there were definitely differences in what the different PRU users were reporting as all of you fed out insatiable appetites for more information. You and the others really helped keep this product sold for a lot of us!
How did you go about getting store credit? I ruined a piece of thick walnut ply during my cut on this post 
It just showed up, I’m assuming it was for materials that were ruined when troubleshooting and testing my GF when it had problems 2 months ago.
I didn’t do anything to get store credit, it was just sitting there. It is gone now! 
I meant to ask did you send an email or a direct message to someone specifically about your issue and about your material being damaged? There still hasn’t been a response to my initial post in this thread by someone from support
Sorry. The whole thread is here:
https://community.glowforge.com/t/pg-cherry-not-cutting-or-engraving-properly/18174/31One of the things we had was a different tube - both @rpegg and I had a Pro tube in our PRUs which were otherwise Basics. Or at least that’s what I presumed because of the variation in cutting results reported at the same power/speed levels for similar materials.
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I couldn’t remember who had the pro tubes, but really all of you kept me and I’m sure others sold on what this wonderful machine could do. Thanks.
At first it had me whacked as I was trying other people’s settings and getting a lot of flashback. When I ran my calibration projects I’d get different settings so I just started using those. Then for awhile they wonked out and my old ones wouldn’t work (I think they were messing with our machine profiles) and then they changed to the new settings and things went back to normal.
I don’t know about the others, but it was a lot of fun playing with the machine. The discovery process was good - could chalk up personal lack of competence to “just need a good manual but since there isn’t one, I’ll just have to muddle through” Sometimes it was all about having to unlearn (or unapply) lessons from the other lasers - early on I had to be careful when I was teaching my laser ops class because I’d keep messing things up because the GF way wasn’t necessarily the “standard” way.
How likely would we have been to laser banana splits or guacamole or any of the other odd things we did? Way easier when it’s not your machine you’re mucking about with 
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Umm… asking for a friend: we’re not supposed to do that? 
LOL! Heck I’m the last guy to ask. I posted my M&M engraving template so others could make custom M&Ms I encourage misbehavior!
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He does. Follow at your peril…there are additional calories involved.
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I was wondering if I do lasagna noodles, will the engrave make it through the baking process so people would encounter random expressions or artistic designs as they navigated dinner? Not that I eat lasagna though (ricotta 
) so I haven’t tried it. Just seems like it should work