Theyâre listed both as âMaterial: birch plywoodâ and â100% solid woodâ. I donât know what you got, but at minimum the seller is sleazy. This is mutually contradictory. Either itâs 100% wood and 0% glue, in which case itâs not plywood, or itâs plywood, which has glue in it, and so itâs not 100% wood. I would return them and make the seller eat the return cost for false advertising, but thatâs me.
Itâs far more likely itâs plywood., since you donât readily get flat pieces of birch without lamination. Itâs a known issue that the laser head is barely powerful enough to cut 1/8" plywood without tuning the machine and good process control. Itâs been discussed here several times before.
The photos in the Amazon listing have no visible surface grain on any of the pieces, which suggests to me that they arenât birch at all (might even be MDF), and the all-caps seller name and weird grammar and vocabulary choices sprinkled through the description suggest a bargain-basement seller from mainland China. Beyond the fact that theyâre probably at least wood-adjacent, I wouldnât bet on anything about these.
I ended up using basswood 1.5mm and cuts are indeed better, even the engraving is cleaner.
About the auto focusâŠI have never, since I purchased the machine, gotten a successful auto focus. It always failed and I have manually chosen the best engraved line on the touchscreen.