Most remakes in a laser shop do not come from the machine. They come from the file: a part cut at the wrong size, an outline that never closed, a name engraved in the wrong font. Each one costs material, machine time and a round of emails. These are the mistakes that come up again and again, and how to prevent them.
A photo or screenshot sent instead of a vector file cannot be cut along an outline. Ask for a vector format (SVG, DXF or PDF with vector data) and say on the product page which formats you accept.
A DXF drawn in inches and opened as millimetres comes out 25.4 times too small. Ask customers to state the units, and measure one known dimension after import before cutting.
An outline with a tiny gap will not drop out cleanly, or the software may not treat it as a cut at all. Join end points in the design tool and check that every cut-out part is a single closed path.
Objects pasted twice or stacked layers make the laser cut the same edge twice, which burns edges and wastes time. Delete duplicates before sending the job.
Live text depends on the font installed on the computer that opens the file. If it is missing, the text is replaced or lost. Convert text to outlines ("object to path" or "create outlines") before exporting.
Some CAD programs can export DXF as binary or in recent versions that older software cannot read. Exporting as ASCII DXF in a widely supported version avoids many import problems.
If your software maps operations to colours, a near-red stroke or a CMYK colour may not be recognised. Publish exact colour values and include them in your template.
Very thin bridges, tiny holes and fine text can burn away or break. State a minimum feature size per material and thickness.
Check that the design fits the bed with a margin, and that the artboard size matches the product the customer ordered.
Embedded images, traced bitmaps with thousands of nodes and hidden objects make files huge and slow. A file size limit catches many of these before they reach you.
If you sell laser or CNC work on Shopify and customers upload their own files, CutReady checks the file on the product page before add-to-cart. It accepts only .dxf, .svg and .pdf, with size limits of 256 KB for SVG, 512 KB for ASCII DXF and 2 MiB for PDF, and add to cart stays locked until the file passes ("File OK"). It comes with a 14-day free trial, then 39 USD every 30 days.