Acrylic Ornament Turned Out Weird

@jules I don’t have silhouette, but shouldn’t all of their “clipart” be vector formats? If they are graphic based like jpeg, then that could possibly be the issue, right?

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I know a lot of my clipart are vectors, but I don’t remember if this one is.

Nope…no apparent gradient in that. From the results of the engrave though, it looks like there is a secondary band across the skirt that is darker, so it’s possible that if that is a raster image, there are slightly different shades of black in there, or some other issue. We’d definitely be better off looking at the actual file.

Usually, but their files can contain raster images as well. We used to do Print and Cut files with them. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think it would probably be simpler if I used a different clipart. :upside_down_face:

Is that the actual file that you used when you created it? That’s a jpeg file, so definitely raster.

I don’t know if that was what caused it though…it shouldn’t have been that much of a difference.

Did you just drag the jpeg onto an open file or did you create an SVG file? (If you created an SVG file, that would be the thing to see.)

Or you can rework your clipart. :smile:

I it all together into an svg file,but for some reason only part of it uploaded.

Try zipping the SVG file first…the forum does weird things to unzipped SVG files.

I seem to have misplaced it.:flushed:

Eh, don’t worry about it. I’ll use something else. Thanks for helping, everybody!

Hey @Silverlight, have you heard of “defocusing”? I don’t think that’s what happened with your ornament, but it made me wonder if you knew about it. Defocusing works really well with bigger acrylic engravings.

I’m not sure what happened with your ornament engraving though. If you find the file and want me to do a test run of it to see if it’s the file or, just let me know. I’d be happy to do it for you.

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Hi,
Also try increasing the LPI!!

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I’m really new to this. don’t know what defocusing is. :pensive:

I work with a lot of acrylic and if it’s something like the angel where you want to have a seamless look the defocus can help smooth it. Increased LPI (lines per inch) can help as well because you’re getting overlap to burn more material. LPI can be changed in the manual settings or by clicking the arrow to the right of the proofgrade settings. Have no fear of losing the PG settings, they reset.

Most importantly DO NOT walk away from acrylic while it is engraving especially if you change settings. It can easily catch on fire.

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I posted the link in my comment to you and it looks like Goobdoob has you covered too. :slight_smile:

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OK, let’s pretend I’m as dense as I am. Where is this defocus and how do I change it?
Thanks! :relaxed:

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You manually set material height to be different from actual.

If you search for that term, you’ll find many discussions about it, but you would need to experiment with your material and adjust your existing settings to determine what works best for you.

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I’m sorry to be a pain, but I still can’t figure out the settings. Could someone possibly send me a screenshot?
Thanks. :flushed:

To defocus the laser, you set your focus height in a way that lies to the machine and makes it focus above the actual material. For example, if you are engraving Proofgrade clear acrylic, the proofgrade settings assume a focus height of .125. To defocus, you would manually input a different focus height, like .25. The Glowforge would focus above the actual material and the beam that hits the material would be spread out.

03%20PM

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Thanks so much!

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