Let’s try another set of facts relative to puzzles. If you laser cut a puzzle, with pieces touching pieces in the design, each puzzle piece’s size will be smaller by half the kerf of that line. Real puzzles are made with cutting dies that push fairly sharp dies into the “board” actually causing the board to burst along the edges of the cuts. This method takes very little away from each piece. Back to lasering puzzles- you mentioned in another post that you laser puzzles on wood. The lens you use has a lot to do with the kerf. Longer lenses may cut thicker wood, but they also have thicker beams and thus have wider kerfs. I do puzzles on a photo mount board. I use a 1.5" lens with a very small kerf, I don’t do anything to allow for that and get a pretty tight fit of the pieces. You also ask about a “vertical cut.” The cut tends to widen under what you cut, it is the nature of lenses to diverge after the focal point, Does that help?
Here is a video that shows what the beam focus and diverging of the beam do: The Basics Of Focus - YouTube
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