The first cut.
Starting settings that name their sources, one energy rule for fire, and the materials that never go under a diode laser.
Start from the maker's table
The app ships starting power, speed and pass rows for real machines — Creality Falcon2 (12W–40W), the Falcon series and A1, and xTool's D1 (5W, 10W) — read from each maker's own parameter pages and stored with a checksum of the page's own table text. A row says where it came from, and the maker's own name stays in the saved setting's note ("Linden planks" is basswood — Tilia).
What's deliberately absent matters too: xTool's newer machines aren't in the table, because their settings now live inside the maker's own software with no numbers on a page to cite. And coloured, mirrored, frosted and transparent acrylics other than black are left out as a convention — stick to the common materials until you've read your sheet's safety data sheet.
Watts, honestly
Many diode modules are sold by electrical watts. The light that reaches the work is several times lower. Enter the optical output in any energy math — the app's converter makes you choose the kind.
The one rule: energy per millimetre
Every setting — the maker's row or your own — carries an energy number you can check by hand:
E = W · (p / 100) · N / v
watts × power fraction × passes ÷ speed (mm/s) = joules per millimetre. 20 W at 80%, one pass, 10 mm/s = 1.6 J/mm.
The app's fire caution shows at 1 J/mm or more in one pass. Why the two regimes sit apart: a 10 W diode cutting at 5 mm/s is at 2 J/mm (cutting — the burn has time to carry); engraving at 250 mm/s sits at 0.01 J/mm. The threshold is the app's own convention — no source publishes one — but the sources agree on the direction: slow, powerful settings are the likeliest to catch fire.
Every number is a starting point
A converted setting — or a maker's row at a different altitude, lens state or day — is "a starting point for a test grid". Extra passes aren't fully the same as a slower pass: two passes concentrate heat differently. Cut the test grid on scrap of the same material, read it, then commit the row.
The never-cut list
| never under the beam | why |
|---|---|
| PVC, vinyl, artificial leather | chlorine fumes — eat the machine and the maker |
| Polycarbonate | fire, and it won't cut past about 1 mm |
| ABS, HDPE | melt, and ABS makes cyanide fumes |
| Polystyrene, polypropylene foam | fire |
| Fiberglass, coated carbon fiber, G10, FR4 | resin fumes |
And one more boundary the app enforces: it refuses to convert settings between laser types — clear acrylic that a CO2 cuts passes diode light straight through, so a converted row would lie to you. "A material not on this list isn't automatically safe; check its safety data sheet."