Product Updates September 2026, part 2 of 3

What shipped in September 2026, part 2 of 3

• 22 releases published between 2026-09-18 and 2026-09-24. This is an archive page — the current release notes live on the main product updates page.
• 2026-09-24 — Vector Stacker: Files Ready for the Laser, Fixes That Fix: Vector Stacker downloads are ready for the laser. The LightBurn file now lays every sheet side by side instead of on top of each other, names each layer after the sheet you see on screen, and says plainly that its speed and power are starting values to tune. The assembly guide gives your real material and thickness, the total stack depth and the finished size, alignment holes go on the sheets that actually have to line up, and every file is numbered front to back the same way as the screen. No more dead ends in Vector Stacker. Word sign and Add text work again. Signed out, Describe shows a clear sign-in button and keeps what you wrote. A saved project reopens with its recipe, a reload keeps your step and view, the browser Back button steps back through the tool, and a file that isn't a picture gets a plain message instead of a stuck screen. The check only offers a fix after testing it on your picture. Each one-tap fix shows what it changes before you tap it, size suggestions stay within your laser bed, a blocked design always gets a way out, Photo Bands is now checked for pieces too small to cut, a design is never marked ready to cut without a check, and a depth map dropped into a painted recipe is moved to Shadow Box.
• 2026-09-24 — Price Changes: PANEL CORE, Photo Vector Artist and Coin 3D Depth: Four prices change today. PANEL CORE, the packed 4K multi-panel sheet on FORGE, is now 6 CR (was 5); a single-panel FORGE CORE fire stays 5 CR. AI Photo Vector Artist Standard 1K is now 8 CR (was 6), the same as Detailed 2K, and Max Detail 4K stays 10 CR. Coin Designer 3D Depth SPARK is now 7 CR (was 5) and 3D Depth UNBOUND is 9 CR (was 7). ULTRA, PANEL ULTRA, MASTER and every member price are unchanged. The price is always shown before you confirm, the credits you already hold work at the new prices, and a failed generation still refunds in full.
• 2026-09-23 — Neural Upscale Handles Large Photos: Neural Upscale no longer fails on large photos. It used to ask for 4× on every image, which the upscaler refuses once the result would pass 8192 pixels on the long side. It now picks the largest enlargement each photo allows, shows the finished size before you spend a credit, and tells you when an image is already as large as it can go. A failed run on a free member upscale now gives that free upscale back.
• 2026-09-23 — Safer Sign-In and Checkout Links: Links that send you back somewhere after signing in, finishing the welcome steps or completing a purchase now only ever return you to a page on Reticle Red. A crafted link can no longer hand you off to another site the moment you sign in.
• 2026-09-23 — Connect Your AI Assistant, Steadier Pages, No Ads: Connect Reticle Red to Claude or another AI assistant. A new page walks through adding the free, read-only connection in Claude, Claude Code, VS Code and Cursor, shows a real answer, and says plainly what it can and cannot do. Steadier pages on phones. The purchase bar on the pricing page no longer jumps into place as the page loads, and a background texture that redrew the whole screen on every frame now costs nothing, which frees The Fabricator to respond much sooner on slower devices. Reticle Red no longer shows ads on any page. The comparison page now lists every head-to-head comparison in one place, with the date each was last checked. The Cuttle, Kittl, SculptOK and VectorWitch pages were re-checked against each vendor's own pages, with current pricing, refund terms and sources. Two out-of-date statements about VectorWitch were corrected: it does generate full SVG designs from text or an image, and it publishes its prices. The EngraveFill Pro card on the comparison page no longer links to the page about EngraveFill.com, a separate product. Old Lithophane Studio links now say plainly that lithophane STL files are no longer made, and point to Depth Studio's free 16-bit height map, which a slicer can turn into a lithophane.
• 2026-09-22 — Fiber Settings Guide, Part-Fit Comparison, Clearer Uploads: New guide: fiber and galvo settings in EZCAD. It explains what speed, power, frequency, pulse width and line interval each change, works through real numbers for stainless and anodized aluminum, and shows how to read the free EZCAD test card. A new comparison page sets out what each AI fill tool publicly says it checks before you burn — part outline, interior holes, kerf and boundary — with a part-fit test you can run on your own part. The Fabricator, Depth Studio, Vector Artist, Neural Upscale, Background Remover and Magic Edit now say beside the upload what happens to your image: it goes to our AI providers only to run your job, is never used to train public models, and stays in your private vault until you delete your account. AI assistants can now look up which Reticle Red tool does a laser job, what it outputs and what it costs, through a read-only connection at reticle-red.com/mcp. It cannot run jobs or see accounts. Comparison pages brought up to date: Bonny Creations' AI Frame checks, LightBurn 2.2's Early Access depth maps, xTool Atomm's September update, MarcAM's new editor and Rayforge's text-only AI generator are now reflected, and two out-of-date statements about xTool and EngraveFill Pro were corrected.
• 2026-09-22 — Faster Fabricator, Steadier Pages, Job-First Tool Pages: The Fabricator opens noticeably faster: an empty canvas no longer builds a full-resolution padding preview for a mask that does not exist yet, which cost seconds of frozen screen on every visit, most of all on phones. Pages no longer jump while they load. The footer used to flash at the bottom of the screen and slide away once the page arrived, and the collapsed guide under a tool used to appear first and then drop below the workspace. Tool pages now answer the job up front: Image Lab, Depth Studio, Coin Designer, Map Maker, Box Maker, Wrap Studio, Outline Studio and the Puzzle Generator each open with a plain answer to the job they do, a real before-and-after or generated output, and a table of inputs, outputs, limits and cost. What Can I Make? now lists every job and the tool that does it before the page finishes loading. The Challenges page now shows every challenge so far, with its theme, dates, prize, entry count and the entries themselves.
• 2026-09-22 — Vector Stacker: Uploaded Pictures Keep Their Dark Colours: Fixed: an uploaded picture with a dark colour — Spider-Man's navy — lost that colour into the black ink sheet; dark saturated colours are paints again, and the grey fringe along every edge no longer becomes confetti pieces. Fixed: a Pro session left on Engrave fill turned every Guided sheet into an engrave operation ("0 sheets", an empty 3D Stack); sheets are always cuts in Layer Art, Shadow Box and Photo Bands. New: the check now knows what the picture is — a colour picture loaded under Shadow Box switches to Painted Wall Art instead of banding as a depth map, flat art under Photo Bands is told so with a one-tap switch, a photo under Painted Wall Art is offered Photo Bands or the AI clean-up, and asking for more colours than the picture has offers the real count.
• 2026-09-21 — Style DNA: Fine Frag: A new Military & Tactical Style DNA, Fine Frag — the tight machined frag inlay you see on titanium knife scales: many small raised squares in level rows with narrow grooves, the knife-scale cousin of Frag Grenade. Live in the Fabricator picker now; a member request.
• 2026-09-21 — Vector Stacker: One Rail for Guided and Pro: Pro is now Guided plus drawers: the same four steps and the same words, with the Pro tools — source and paint tools, colour separation, cut settings, kerf, bridges, cut vs engrave, bed check — folded under Style and Export instead of a second sidebar with its own vocabulary. Switching between Guided and Pro mid-project no longer changes what the page looks like.
• 2026-09-21 — Vector Stacker: Land on the Painted Stack: After any separation the Vector Stacker now opens on the painted 3D stack — matte paint under gallery light, the sheet stock named, the numbers folded underneath — with Flat and Exploded one tap away. Paint schemes never recolour the black ink sheet, and Save these paints keeps the scheme you mixed in your browser for next time. Examples now show the fox sample and its rendered stack.
• 2026-09-21 — Vector Stacker: Samples That Pass, Describe Rebuilt: Try a sample now loads a piece drawn for the recipe you are on — a fox for Painted Wall Art, a moonlit lake for Stepped Sign, a depth map for Shadow Box, a portrait for Photo Bands — and each one passes the check at the defaults, so you see a READY TO CUT before you cut anything of your own; switch recipes and the sample switches with you. Describe it is rebuilt around the same words as the page: pick the recipe first, describe what is in the picture (no lettering — it shreds), tap a style, choose your paints, and the price sits on the button. How it works is four cards that match the four steps, offered once on your first visit. Sheet stock now defaults to 3 mm birch.
• 2026-09-21 — The Check Now Fixes Itself: The Vector Stacker’s check used to list every warning with a number a maker cannot act on; it now folds them into one card per cause with the fix computed for you — make it this wide, use this material, one colour fewer, more underlap, clean up with AI, or redraw with thicker lines — each a single tap. The verdict (READY TO CUT, things to fix, BLOCKED) sits above the canvas; the full numbers fold underneath. Sheet rows and paint schemes now speak plain English.
• 2026-09-21 — Describe It: Your Paints, Thicker Ink: Describe it now asks for the paints you name: pick up to six colours (or a preset) and MASTER 2.0 draws with exactly those, the drawing is snapped to them, and the sheets you cut are the paints you buy. The prompt itself was rebuilt from measured results — a colouring-book brief with connected lines, no white sky, no text — so the ink comes back as one piece. Black lines too thin for your material are thickened automatically before the check, and a Stepped Sign no longer stalls on a few stray dark pixels.
• 2026-09-21 — Vector Stacker: Artwork First: The Vector Stacker now keeps your artwork in view on every step and every screen: the check sits under the canvas (folded to its verdict on a phone) instead of beside it, the controls follow the preview with the step’s button always within reach, and one view switcher — Stack, Flat, Exploded — replaces the two that used different words. Finished size shows in your unit everywhere and starts at 300 mm / 12 in; the header is one line lighter.
• 2026-09-21 — Describe It Draws with MASTER 2.0: The Vector Stacker’s Describe it now draws with MASTER 2.0 by default (ULTRA CORE stays one tap away): whole scenes with uniform connected linework and flat fills, no rendered shadows or perspective, and every prompt builds Layer Art — never a depth-map stack — whatever mode you were last in.
• 2026-09-21 — Vector Stacker: Guided Mode: The Vector Stacker now opens in Guided mode: four steps, one decision each. Start with a description, a picture or a depth map; pick one of four recipes — Painted Wall Art, Stepped Sign, Shadow Box, Photo Bands — and see only the dials that matter for it; read the check with plain-language fixes that name the dial to turn; export with one button. Everything else waits under More options, and Pro keeps every control exactly where it was.
• 2026-09-21 — Layer Art: Prompt or Picture to Painted, Glued Sheets: The Vector Stacker opens on Layer Art: describe a piece or upload a reference picture, choose 2–6 paint colours, and get one cut file per sheet to paint and glue. Two doctrines, both offered. Ink Window puts every black line on one connected top sheet with windows, and each colour on its own painted sheet that runs under the lines by an underlap you set, on a solid painted backer — the look of layered wall art. Nested makes terrace boards, each colour plus everything in front of it, in an order you can change. THE CHECK reads every Layer Art sheet before export: loose ink bridged back to the outline, pieces too small to glue counted and dropped, lines and windows narrower than the material can hold, and how many pieces each colour needs. The 3D preview stacks the painted sheets at their real levels, and the ZIP carries layer-art.json, validation.json and a paint-and-glue assembly guide.
• 2026-09-20 — Punch Through on Every Fabricator Engine: The hole treatment choice now appears on every engine, not only MASTER. FRAMED keeps your exact holes in front of the AI so the art composes around them; PUNCH THROUGH lets it compose across solid material and the exact holes are cut through the finished art afterwards — no standoff band around thin material, which is what a comb, a grille or a fine-toothed part needs. Your painted holes are always cut exactly either way.
• 2026-09-20 — Settings Tables, Guide Bylines, and a Straight Answer on Fit: Every bundled and operator-verified laser recipe is now a readable table on one page — material, source, machine, power, speed, frequency, hatch, passes and pulse width, 77 records across wood, metal, acrylic, leather, glass and coated stock. Above them is the method: where the numbers come from, what VERIFIED actually means (three independent operator vouches, the submitter's own never counts), and why none of it is a preset. Each row still links to its full record. A page that says plainly who Reticle Red is not for. Six cases where another tool is the better answer — machine control, offline work, CAD/CAM, a stock design library, guaranteed settings, general photo editing — each naming what to use instead, alongside what you need before it is useful, which machines and formats it covers, and what it costs. Every guide, tutorial and manual section now shows who wrote it, when it was published and last updated, and how it arrived at what it publishes — numbers from production runs on real CO2, diode and MOPA machines, and a plain statement that they are starting points for a test grid rather than verified settings for your laser. Product Updates was one 17,000-word page. It now opens on the current month, with the full history kept in dated archives one click away, so finding a release you half-remember no longer means scrolling past every release since April. Pages load lighter. The ad script no longer competes with the page during the first paint, and the shared translation bundle every page downloads before anything renders dropped by about 40 KB in English and 65 KB in Spanish. About now publishes the facts behind the site: who builds it, where, since when, how it is structured, and an explicit note that Reticle Red is laser design software and not a firearms optic — the confusion the name invites in every search.
• 2026-09-19 — Free Credits Now Fire SPARK: Your 12 welcome credits now fire SPARK CORE in the Fabricator and SPARK in the Coin Designer — the tiers they stretch furthest across, six starter designs instead of two. FORGE, ULTRA, MASTER, FORGE COLOR and 3D RELIEF unlock the moment you buy any credit pack, starting at $1.99, or start Operator Command. Your balance and saved work carry over, and nothing you have already made changes. Locked engines stay visible in every picker with a padlock, the price they would cost and what they are good at, so you can see the whole ladder before you spend. Tapping one opens the credit packs instead of failing after you fire.
• 2026-09-18 — Scene Stacker: Depth Maps Become Shadow-Box Sheets: Vector Stacker gains a Scene mode: hand it a depth map — from Depth Studio, a 3D RELIEF fire, the Coin Designer, or an upload — and it builds 3 to 8 nested cut sheets where every sheet rests on the one behind it, with a frame on every sheet, registration, an air gap for the 3D preview, and named files (01 foreground … 05 distant background). Stacking a map is free. THE CHECK runs before you export a scene: per-sheet material %, floating pieces before and after auto-bridging, narrowest feature against your material's minimum, sheet uniqueness, and plain-language warnings. A stack that cannot cut is blocked, and scene.json + validation.json travel in the ZIP so a scene can be reopened exactly. Depth Studio and the Fabricator's Export ribbon now offer Stack this map / Stack Scene, so a depth map goes straight into the sheet builder instead of the colour tracer.

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