Wasted half a sheet of 20mm on a Thursday because I couldn't find my own settings. So I built something to fix it
Last fall I was running 20mm carbon steel on our 6kW. A job we'd done before, but on different plate stock. Supplier switched from S235 to S355 without telling us. I started with our old settings (1200 mm/min, O2 at 0.9 bar, focus at -3.0) and got halfway through the first sheet before the edge quality went to hell. Dross you could hang a coat on. Backed the speed down to 1000, bumped gas to 1.1, still not right. By the time I had a clean cut dialed in I'd burned through about $180 in plate and an hour of production time on what should have been a 15-minute setup.
The part that pissed me off was that I'd solved this EXACT problem six months earlier on a different job. Same material class, similar thickness. But I couldn't remember if I'd written those settings in the notebook, on the whiteboard, or in one of forty text files on the shop computer. Classic.
So I started building a tool to fix it. Started as a spreadsheet, grew into something bigger once other operators started contributing their verified settings. The idea: operators log what actually works on their machines, everyone benefits from each other's testing. Your 6kW HSG cutting 12mm mild steel? Someone with a similar setup already logged their verified speed, gas, and focus. You get their proven starting point instead of guessing from scratch.
For materials or thicknesses where no operator has logged data yet, AI generates a conservative starting point based on the physics (wavelength, power density, material properties). It's clearly labeled as "AI suggestion, unverified" so you know the difference between something a human tested and something the machine calculated. Once you try it and confirm it works, it becomes verified community data for the next person.
Right now there are 5,800+ verified settings from real operators. Everything from hobby diode stuff up to 25mm carbon and 316L on 12kW machines. When you search, it matches against YOUR setup (specifically same laser type, similar wattage, same material) and weights results by how close that operator's machine is to yours.
It does require an account because it tracks your specific machine and learns from your feedback. You tell it a cut was too fast or too slow, next time the recommendation adjusts for YOUR machine's quirks. Over time it basically becomes your personalized parameter memory that actually remembers what you forgot to write down.
I put the link on my profile if anyone wants to try it.
Still building this out and the industrial side needs more operators contributing thick material data specifically. Curious from the thick-material crowd: when you switch to a new alloy or thickness, what's your actual process? Manufacturer charts, machine vendor support, gut feel and test cuts? And once you nail it, where does that knowledge actually live?