How do I set the material thickness in a material test? Unlike the layers section that has a box for thickness, I do not see it in the card settings. I only see z-axes, but I cannot seem to lower it accurately and unsure if this is where I set the height.
You don’t. In Device Settings, it is only for step-down cuts.
You set the focus with a gauge supplied with your laser, typically a short metal cylinder or a thin plastic plate, or by following instructions from the manufacturer.
Thanks for the reply. I have a GWEIKE cloud 2. For this, I have to set with the software, I do not have a way to manually focus.
I am not familiar with this machine, but surely you have to know the distance from the laser to the workpiece. However, Lightburn does not care about distance. It only cares about position, speed, and power. It is up to you, or the laser, to figure out how far the laser should be from the workpiece.
Curious… how did you use the laser before Lightburn?
First machine. Went with one that could be used without any online software, i.e., lightburn. I am not sure what you mean about lightburn not caring about distance, it can be turned on. I turned it on in the settings and digitally raise and lower the laser by telling it the distance to lower. (17mm - material thickness)
I should have said Lightburn does not use Zaxis values except in step cutting. Basically, it is a 2-axis program with a bit of Zaxis commands. I learned this the hard way with my 3018 Pro with laser option. I had to save the GCode and manually wright in the Zmoves I wanted.
You must admit this is manual control, and not program control, right?
Back to my question, rephrased… Did you make any parts with your machine before using Lightburn?
I’m not familiar with that controller or the settings/controls associated, but if you click the edit text and/or edit material setting buttons on the material test window, you should have z offset controls available. Not sure how those work with your machine but it’s a start.
I set my initial focus prior to opening the material test tool and use the settings inside the tool for special needs. For actual focus tests (multiple Z offsets rolled into one test run.), I had to build my own test files.
Gweike machines do strange things with the Z axes…
See if this link will help you… I don’t have one of these either 
I have it on good authority that you set the material height in Layer 00.
Material Test uses every setting assigned to layer 00 except for the two parameters you’re testing for. When you open the Material Test Generator it will apply the height to your Material Test or you can click on the Layer 00 button in the test generator to edit and adjust the height in Layer 00.
You can also adjust Layer 01 settings to provide the speed and power settings for the text generated by the Material Test Generator.
After running a few of these tests, you’ll also see the ‘fencepost’ math.
For an elegant result, if you select speeds for example 100-400 mm per second select a count of 7 instead of 6 for even intervals of 50mm per second.
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Great, I will be trying today and will report back.
Good stuff, John. Thanks. Lots there for me to dig into.
My only real complaint with the material test so far has been my inability to set it to fill all. I find the fill individual process doesn’t translate well on some materials.
I believe setting the Layer 00 settings to ‘Fill’ will fill all the test squares.
I’m not quite certain that I follow but I’d love to see some pictures of tests you didn’t care for.
The goal of material testing is to demonstrate which speed and power settings work well, which ones don’t work well, and which ones are way out for a given material.
In an ideal world, you have an obvious diagonal line separating sub-par engraved areas from workable engraved areas across your test pattern.
In a less ideal world, there’s a setting that’s not right and there are dark vertical lines on the left and right sides of each test box.
Maybe there’s something more interesting to see in your pictures.
Thanks, setting a small line on the material, setting height and not outputting that line caused the tool to work perfect.
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