My nominal 3020 bed has at times been a PITA as it would not reach the extremities of an A4 sheet only getting to 205 wide and maximum width was a bare amount over 300mm before reaching the physical stops of travel. Where there was travel available was on the X and Y limit switches, for no reason at all there was 15mm and change available in the Y direction so I can now use a docking cut of 220mm from the origin and easily hit 310 in X and still a few more available if I do some more bending on the micro switch arm.
To what end? I can now square up and finish a blank to full A4 dimensions (297x210) or 300mm wide if needed from larger sheets. Currently I have been buying long strips of Acrylic and Ply at a nominal 300mm wide to cut down as needed as these are stripped out of 1220x2440 sheets sometimes these run 305-310 wide depending on the saw cuts from the suppliers. For some bizarre reason our long time metricated country still sells 8x4 foot sheets of timber and acrylic
Part of the reason for this is I am about to build a proper pin bed with a fixed 0,0 Datum to work from and in particular to run engraving jobs on from sometimes non Laser cut items but with known dimensions. Also things like the Cork coasters I have coming in making a simple sheet jig to hold them in place becomes a simple matter with no mucking about when you need to engrave them.
For others, don't be afraid to go looking for a few more mm even on the larger beds sometimes it could be there just for the sake of a little tweakage.
In my next life I am buying a bigger Laser
