Sister-in-Law was leaving and hadn’t gotten anything printed for her. She doesn’t have pierced ears and I wanted to try something else so asked her for suggestions. I had promised a scarf clasp to another sister-in-law so I thought this would a good time to try it out. Started with a photo of a ginko leaf and then traced and prepared the file. Felt comfortable enough to prepare a file from scratch in Inkscape this morning and import it into the UI. Just remembering to convert to path and to get the fills and strokes correct. A little difference command and there it is. Start with a base layer of photo. Add second layer for engrave, third for through cut and final score layer. The GFUI brings it in just fine and makes a differentiation so you can click what get what operation you desire.
Edited image to have a band of finished surface wood or whatever material around the circumference. Tweaked the cutouts a bit for the engrave.
Here is the svg:
[right clicky to save as …]
Here is the file. Note three colors. One black for engrave.
Green is vector cut through.
Red is vector score.
Black is going to be light engraved.
Screen capture of process to be uploaded later along with printing demo and finished files. That’s this evening. I’m heading to the woods.
Good luck! Worse that happens is you ruin a small piece of wood.
My philosophy on woodworking has always been that you can spend a whole day fretting over how to do a cut and if you measured right. But at some point you have to make some saw dust, so might as well not spend the whole day worrying and just cut. Luckily wood grows on trees…
Hey @jordanloshinsky. Great to hear from you. Catch up soon, eh.
I spent a few hours in my shop planing down some walnut today. I will always have a supply of wood. Check out my YouTube on woods on parade. Pretty lame but of interest to those who have interest.
But the ProofGrade is amazing. Not sure how the pricing will work, but whatever it costs, you are buying perfect hardwood pieces. Haven’t done much plywood so I can’t comment yet. What I have so far is great.
The more I hear about Proofgrade the more likely I am to use it as my source for just about all my supplies. Since I’m not going to be using the GF for a business, all my uses are likely to be pretty low volume. Especially for one-off projects, I’d rather not have to chew up a lot of generic material (and runtime!) trying to get the settings right. Now I’m just wondering how well it holds up to drool.
Hey @marmak3261 indeed we do. I have a few projects I’m trying to clear out then I may actually have time to put my feet up over Christmas.
I am in the middle of your latest video on the assort woods you have. I’m interested to see how different species react to the laser. You should make a book of woods and how your settings effect them.
@cynd11 you would be surprised what gets thrown out at your local commercial/industrial wood workers. Every place I’ve ever worked has a fireplace box that is scraps for the workers to take home and burn. If you politely approach a place and ask, they will usually just toss tons of stuff at you(give, not literal ). Most industrial places consider anything under 2-3 foot long to be garbage. I’ve build tons of great projects from “garbage” cabinet grade wood.
Look for “millwork”, “exterior door”, custom door, custom cabinetry, or furniture makers in your area.
Also local parks have free wood, but you need a really quiet chainsaw.
I had a glitch uploading the second half. Will try again tonight. Almost 80 subscribers! I feel sorry for them.
Great idea about the book. I’ve been setting up a HanDbase file on my iPhone to take notes. Can’t stand the new apps for tracking mileage. Got it first on my Handspring Visor and been using it ever since. Almost at a million miles.
Haha! Great tips. I’d like to scavenge for wood, and acrylic as well, but on the other hand my available storage space for even free stuff is pretty limited.
Hello, just a quick question I don’t know if @marmak3261 can answer at this point or any other beta users or even @dan and the @staff I was just wondering about materials that are not proofgrade… would the GF read them and identify them like in the video a MacBook Pro… ( in the video a girl inserts a MacBook Pro to the GF and the GF goes like “oh it’s a mac!” And then it etches it ). Is the GF gonna read some other materials or do we have to introduce manually every single other material that does not have a UV code ???
Happy day to everyone
They have said that the macbook and iPhone will (eventually) be recognizable, but for wood, acrylic, etc, to be auto-recognizable it would need the qr code that glowforge would be putting on their proof grade. Wouldn’t work real well since two pieces of baltic birch plywood can be very different. However they have said they will be implementing a way for you to save your own presets so when you put a piece of your own material in that you have used before and have figured out the settings, then you can simply choose it from a menu with all you pre-sets.
Didn’t drink my coffee this morning, hope that made sense
Wouldn’t spend any time looking at settings for other lasers. Every laser is different. You might be able to start with similar material Proofgrade settings and adjust for effect. For example Proofgrade Maple plywood might be a starting point for store bought Maple plywood of similar thickness. All of us will have to keep a log of what works and what doesn’t if it’s not Proofgrade. The forum will certainly be a resource for what others have found successful.
You ask great questions that I have and will investigate soon enough, . @kennethclapp did a good job answering as well as I could. I will document how to approach non-ProofGrade materials.
If you find someone who says their settings for a 40W tube… those are likely the same settings you will want to use as well. The speed is meaningless if given as a percent (which is infuriatingly often), but if they say their speed in mm/min or other distance/time measure, you can translate that across as well.
But, just like with the Proofgrade plywood to random plywood you purchase locally… the material used for the settings you find online are likely different from the material you use. So the online settings only give you a baseline to work from.
Doing a material test like this one is always advisable if you will work with a specific material on a wide range of projects.
Spot on. It’s always a place to start. Combined with a calibration test sample and you’re good to go. Then keep them all in a notebook until GF adds the “save custom material settings” feature to the software.
I don’t know if 
). Is the GF gonna read some other materials or do we have to introduce manually every single other material that does not have a UV code ???
. 