Your material

These settings tell the studio what you are cutting and what your machine can manage. Get them right once for the material you usually use and you can mostly forget them.

In both studios every one of them that changes a cut - the finished size, the kerf, the minimums, the canvas margin - is in Build quality in the settings on the left, with the rest of what the build reads. Material, below it, holds the material's name and Sheet thickness, which are recorded and never cut.

The two you must set

Everything else on this page has a sensible default. These two have defaults too, but they depend on what is actually on your bed, so check them.

Sheet thickness

How thick one sheet is, in millimetres; a new project starts at 6.35 mm. 3 mm for most plywood and MDF; 6.35 mm for the 1/4 inch Luan the defaults assume.

It changes no cut in either studio. It is what the 3D preview stacks the sheets at, so the depth on screen matches the depth in your hand, and what the README in the download records. A thicker piece comes from thicker material, not from this number.

Measure it rather than trusting the label — nominal 3 mm ply is often 2.7, and across five layers that is 1.5 mm of depth the preview shows and the piece does not have.

Finished size

How wide the finished piece is, side to side, from 50 to 900 mm; a new project starts at 300 mm. Every other measurement is relative to this, so setting it first saves re-checking the rest. 200 mm is a good first piece: big enough to show detail, small enough to cut quickly. It is also the setting to reach for when the check complains about thin material, because the whole design scales with it and rebuilding at a new size is free.

It is a slider rather than a box, because the right size is a thing you see rather than calculate, with four buttons for common beds: 8" (203 mm), 11" (279 mm, the Glowforge bed width), 16" (400 mm) and 24" (600 mm). The height is not set separately.

• In Stepped Layers it is the first thing in Build quality, just below Source artwork, with Maintain source aspect ratio beside it. The height follows the picture's proportions, so a tall picture comes out taller than it is wide. After a build the hint under the slider, and the canvas size at the foot of the studio, say what it came out as.
• In Landscape Silhouette Layers it is the first thing in Build quality, and the border decides the height — see Border & frame.

Both studios have an mm / inch switch for showing and typing measurements in either unit; it sits on the Build quality heading and switches the finished size and every measurement in the pane. It never changes what is cut, and the Stepped studio opens in millimetres each time.

Allowing for the beam

Kerf (the width of material the laser burns away as it cuts) is why a cut part comes out slightly smaller than drawn. It is usually between 0.1mm and 0.2mm, and it depends on your machine, your material and your speed.

Kerf

The width of your beam, in millimetres. Telling the studio the real figure is what makes finished parts come out the size you drew them.

Apply kerf compensation

Whether to act on that number. On, the studio widens every shape by half the kerf so the cut part comes out the size asked for. If your pieces have been coming out slightly loose, this is why.

Off is right when your machine or its software already compensates — doing it twice makes parts oversized by a full kerf, which is the same mistake in the other direction.

The minimums

These are the studio’s instructions about what is too small to survive. It uses them when building the stack, and the check uses them again afterwards. If the check complains about fine detail, these are the numbers it is complaining against — raising them makes the studio simplify more, lowering them lets more delicate work through and more of it fails on the bed.

Min feature size

The smallest separate piece of material worth cutting. Below this it is more likely to drop through the bed than end up in the artwork, and thin ones char rather than cut. Around 1 mm for 3 mm ply.

A new project starts at 0.5 mm, which keeps nearly every piece the picture has - raise it if small pieces drop through your bed or char. The two studios apply it differently.

• In Stepped Layers it is measured as a circle this wide — about 0.2 mm² at 0.5 mm, 7 mm² at 3 mm. A piece of wood standing inside an opening, like a dot or the middle of a small O, that is smaller than that circle is cut away with its opening rather than held with a tab, and so is a separate piece of a stencil or a tabbed drawing. Scraps the step leaves behind that are smaller than a quarter of the size squared — 0.06 mm² at 0.5 mm — are swallowed by the cut around them. The check then flags any piece still smaller than the circle as tiny_piece.
• In Landscape Silhouette Layers it is measured as an area, the size squared: a loose piece under 0.25 mm² at 0.5 mm is dropped, 9 mm² at 3 mm. See Build quality.

If small separate parts you wanted are missing — dots, eyes, teeth, stars — lower it and rebuild, which is free. In Stepped Layers check Min blob area on the Clean Artwork step as well, which removes small specks before the build ever sees them.

Min cutout width

The narrowest gap the beam can actually cut out. A slot narrower than this closes up with char and stops reading as an opening — you get a scorch mark where you wanted a hole. It cannot sensibly be less than your kerf.

In Stepped Layers the build closes any opening narrower than this all the way across, on every sheet, and the check reports the ones that are narrow only in part as narrow_cutout. This is the minimum the layer step works against: every sheet below the top has its openings pulled in, so a large step makes more slots too narrow to clear.

Min bridge width

The narrowest sliver of wood the design is allowed to leave, including the tabs that hold islands in place. Anything thinner snaps while you are cleaning up the piece, which is the worst time for it to happen because the cut is already paid for.

In Stepped Layers every tab that holds an island is built at least this wide - and never under 1.5 mm, however low this is set, because a tab has to hold - and a strand the check measures confidently under it is an error, thin_bridge: the stack does not pass until it is dealt with.

A new project starts at 0.1 mm, the lowest the field takes. At that the build leaves every strand as drawn instead of widening it, and the check does not flag thin wood - the finest detail survives. Tabs are the exception: they are still built at least 1.5 mm wide. It is also thinner than a typical beam (a 0.15 mm kerf), so a strand that narrow can burn through or snap. If pieces break, set it to what your material really holds - about 1.5 to 2 mm in 3 mm ply - and rebuild, which is free. It also sets how closely the exported curves follow the trace: a curve may not narrow a strand below this width, so at 0.1 mm the paths keep to the traced edge point for point - more nodes and a bigger file, and on a small picture the steps of its pixels can show in the cut. At 1.5 mm or more the curves are drawn smoothly through them.

The rest

Canvas margin

Blank sheet kept around the artwork, in case you want a margin — somewhere to clamp, or simply so the design does not run to the boundary. In Stepped Layers it comes out of the finished size: the sheet stays as wide as you set it, and the artwork is scaled down to leave the margin clear.

Maintain source aspect ratio

Stepped Layers only. On, the default, the sheet keeps the proportions of your picture, so the height follows the finished width. Off, the sheet becomes a square as wide as the finished size, and the artwork is fitted inside it without being stretched: a tall design comes out narrower, with blank sheet down both sides, and a wide one gets blank sheet above and below. Nothing is ever squashed. Almost always leave it on; turn it off when you want a square sheet whatever the picture.

Questions