What power and speed should I start with?
Start from a published figure for your machine and material, then prove it on an offcut of the same sheet. A number from someone else's machine is a starting point, never a setting: laser power drifts with age, lenses differ, air assist changes everything, and two sheets sold as the same plywood can behave differently.
What actually transfers
Not the numbers, but the ratio behind them. Burnt energy is roughly power multiplied by passes and divided by speed, so a machine with twice the power can run about twice the speed for the same cut. That is how a table for a 10 W diode can be adapted for a 20 W one, and why it should still be tested.
Test in this order
- Cut a small square at the published setting. If it does not go through, drop the speed before you raise the power: at 100 % already, more passes beat more power.
- Engrave a strip at a few power levels and pick the tone you want. Engraving is about looks, so trust your eyes, not a table.
- Set the line spacing while you are there: xTool Studio calls it lines per cm, LightBurn calls it the interval in millimetres, and they are the same number upside down (100 lines/cm is a 0.1 mm interval). More lines is finer and slower.
- Write the winning numbers down against the machine, the material and the thickness. That triple is the whole key.
Where MakerWizard's numbers come from
Starting settings come from published tables, mostly the machine vendors' own material pages, and are marked published or estimated so you can see which is which. Estimated ones are scaled from a published row by the ratio above. Your own tested numbers are kept per machine, material and thickness, and always replace ours.
One material to refuse
Never cut PVC or anything else chlorinated. It releases chlorine gas, which ruins the machine and harms you. If a sheet is unlabelled and you cannot identify it, do not burn it.