Materials, settings, safety & shop business
Mara Vance
Materials, settings, safety & shop business
Mara keeps the settings library. The method is documented and boring on purpose: collect manufacturer charts, owner-reported numbers, and community-shared test grids for a material; normalize them to percent power and mm/s; bracket the spread into a starting range; and publish the range with a test-grid recipe rather than a single magic number. Your diode, your lens, and your batch of plywood are all different — the library respects that.
The safety database is the part of the job Mara treats as non-negotiable. Chlorinated materials never get settings on this site, full stop — chlorine gas becomes hydrochloric acid in lungs and on optics. The refusal card in the settings tool is hers.
The other half of the beat is the business math: pricing formulas, batch throughput, and what an Etsy order actually nets after fees and consumables. Mara writes for the maker whose laser has to earn its bench space.
On the record
Pass Depth does not operate a testing lab. Our scores and settings standardize published manufacturer data, owner reports, and community-shared test grids. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement. Read the full methodology.
Bed’s warming up
Mara’s guides are being published.
In the meantime, the settings library and glossary are fully stocked.
60 guides published
43 products vetted
221 reader price checks
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