I have been building a slightly expanded buildlog2.x laser - approximately 24x32" build area with an 80w laser using the AWC608 from Lightobject. It's been up and cutting for a few weeks, but only mostly. Some prints are perfect, others just aren't cutting properly at all. I started noticing it when I would cut out a big object at say 12mm/s and pieces at the far end (longest laser distance) just didn't cut quite all the way through, likely due to beam divergence. I would hit start to rerun the cut, and it wouldn't cut the same path as before, and often left burn marks where I didn't want them. Even if I did a full system reset, this sometimes happens.
Additionally, on some cuts, the laser has a really hard time with losing accuracy during the print, especially if it needs to do a lot of traveling. Oddly enough, sometimes it seems to "self correct" on some errors later during the print. Below is a picture of a US map I cut, and the western half of the US is all messed up. Sometimes when the laser would try to retrace lines it would be off hugely, but other areas of the cut would be fine. I've also attached the settings from Lasercad. Would someone be kind enough to post a few screenshots of their settings from LaserCad just so I can compare mine?
Zoom in on the west coast of the US and on central Asia and you'll see where it looks like the cutter just decided to jump over a bit.
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/MP7dGzf.jpg?1)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/OhFw186.jpg?1)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/QaWNSBJ.jpg)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/AvD32yO.jpg)
I'm using NEMA17 steppers with microstepping and so far have loved most of the machine, but I can't quite seem to get a high quality cut. My cuts sometimes work pretty well, other times there's major inaccuracies. However, a lot of the time my raster engraving seems to work great.
Thoughts?