A stress test for my new Glowforge

snowgrains · January 7, 2018, 7:22pm

Received my Glowforge Pro yesterday. The week preceding its arrival, I was working on a design I wanted to try. This has a massive amount of detail and I wanted to see if it was even possible to make it at a scale of 3" square.

On my CNC machine, I’d have to size it at 24" x 24" in order to preserve the detail.

All told, I’m happy. The detail in the flames collapsed, but I can clearly see the symbols for Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mars. To have anything recognizable is impressive.

Can’t wait to see where this leads next!

evansd2 · January 7, 2018, 8:05pm

If you drop the power, I’ll bet some of your detail comes back.

People have had good luck with tinting light engraves on different prefinished surfaces, But this looks like draft board? Was it masked?

Try lightly sanding the piece with really fine grit paper (600+?), more detail might also be revealed.

pauline.lally · January 7, 2018, 9:23pm

Very aggressive project for early attempt.

evansd2 · January 7, 2018, 10:10pm

Oh hey you might find some of this of interest:

https://community.glowforge.com/t/practical-limits-of-lpi-in-baltic-birch/16172?source_topic_id=17491

GrooveStranger · January 7, 2018, 10:12pm

Lower power, maybe more passes, and I bet you can do even better! I am always delighted by the tiny details we can produce.

Jules · January 8, 2018, 1:28am

Looks great!

snowgrains · January 8, 2018, 9:53am

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll give that a try.

snowgrains · January 8, 2018, 9:54am

Thanks! I’ll take a look.

snowgrains · January 8, 2018, 1:00pm

Second effort this morning. Now 6" square. Instead of Proofgrade Draftboard, it’s locally sourced 1/8" Baltic Birch I wish I could say it was fully weeded when I took the picture, but not. Weeding is a challenge.

tim1724 · January 8, 2018, 7:06pm

Taking a photo is always the easiest way to find the areas you’ve missed. For some reason the masking is always a lot more noticeable in photographs than in real life.

dan · January 15, 2018, 11:45pm

Thanks for sharing your trials! Can’t wait to see what other ideas you try out in the future.

snowgrains · January 16, 2018, 12:19pm

Thanks, @dan! Still have my training wheels on, but slowly coming up to speed. Notice a particular theme, so far?

Jules · January 16, 2018, 5:14pm

Uhhhhhm …kitties?

snowgrains · January 16, 2018, 5:21pm

Not a bad guess. There are a lot of cats at the barn where my horse is stabled.