I’m having an issue with the cuts on my 3mm acrylic being at an angle. I’m using a 2" lens on a 150W laser, and there is a noticeable slant to the edge of the acrylic after it’s cut. I’m curious if the “Material (mm)” setting will allow me to move the laser bed up when the cuts start so that I get the center point of the laser closer to the middle of my material.
If I have a 3mm piece of acrylic, should I enter 3 in the material box and it will do the trick, or do I need to do 1.5mm so that the laser head moves just 1.5mm instead of 3mm.
If the slant isn’t consistent on all 4 edges, or if opposite sides are slanted parallel, it’s probably a beam alignment issue - Your beam might not be perfectly perpendicular to your cutting bed.
Having said that, even the most vertical bean will have a slight cone shape from being focused, and as acrylic melts it may recede from the cut. Given the thickness you’re cutting, I’d expect both of those to be pretty negligible though.
The “Material (mm)” setting controls the “base height” for the Z axis when Z control is enabled. In your case, with the DSP controller, it will be the focus height + the material height. The next release enables the use of “relative” mode for DSP controllers, which will make this much simpler. Then you’d set your focus normally, and just specify a negative Z offset on the cut layer you’re using to push the focus point into the material a little.