I’ve recently started experiencing this issue - photos attached. I’m cutting 3mm birch. My power settings are 85% max and min at 20mm/s. I have a CO2 50 watt laser and everything is cutting nicely with one exception. I have three interior cuts with rounded ends. If I orient the part horizontally, the interior square openings cut just fine but the rounded shapes do not. If I orient the part vertically, everything cuts correctly. I have the min and max set the same so I shouldn’t be seeing a power dip on the curves and that wouldn’t explain the difference in performance based on orientation. I’m also confused why the square shapes cut fine but the “pill shaped” parts behave very differently. I’m running the latest version of Lightburn.
One additional note… I’ve tried bumping the power settings up and slowing the speed down but that doesn’t seem to really address the issue. I have to increase the power and slow the speed beyond what is necessary to effectively cut through the material.
Thanks. Sadly this isn’t the only part or attempt I have half of a sheet of birch with failed cuts without patches. I even tried a different sheet to test to see if there was some variation in the density of the wood. The patch theory also doesn’t quite add up since the rectangular holes cut just fine at the same speed and power settings.
I understand very well that it is not easy to imagine these variations in plywood. But you can try cutting the same file in balsa wood or cardboard…if you think the fault lies in something other than the material.
That’s an outstanding thought. As I mentioned in my original post, cutting the part oriented horizontally leads to the issue but rotating it 90 degrees everything cuts fine. Testing on a more consistent material can confirm if it’s material or something else. I’ll post results.
OK… so… gonna close this out. I switched over to a different material and it cut fine. I switched back to the same sheet of “problem” material with the same settings as yesterday and… it cut fine… even in different spots across the sheet where it wasn’t cutting through. Tested on different sheets as well. Maybe it was the restart after shutting down for the night or maybe it was just one section of particularly dense material. I lean towards the former because the square holes cut perfectly yesterday while the elliptical hole right next to them failed to cut. Maybe it was a hiccup in the controller impacting acceleration on curved shape. Who knows. @bernd.dk thanks for the thoughts and suggestions!
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