Thank you very much for this!
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Yeah I’ll try to set it up in a bit. I have a cutting job I am trying to start on my pro that will probably take 40 mins. I should be able to setup the aura and throw in a aluminum business card and see what’s up.
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OK hooked up the aura and setup a small svg, this will be interesting. It’s purple anodized aluminum, which may be the worst choice (purple laser, purple surface color, it might reflect more laser than it absorbs. We’ll see.). I am using full power at 1 speed, with 405 LPI, it’s a 40 minute experiment.
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Thank you so much. In case it works please if you do not mind share with me what did you did in the app because as i said there is no material to choose that fits even close to the iPad
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Thanks again. Please keep me update.
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I just did a manual setting. If you’re new to all this you might like this page:
Check out #6, it has links to the official support page about manual settings as well as a great deal of other useful info. 
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So It’s still running, but I can see that there’s no visible effect on the aluminum. This may be because I chose purple (black might be better, I don’t know), but it’s looking like a fail. I’ll let it finish and look closely, but it’s definitely not a clear engrave like you get on the Pro/Plus/Basic.
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Thank you for the update. I will give it a try probably tomorrow, on a very old iPad before i do it on my latest and i will inform this topic as well. Thanks again for your time and help.
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You can barely see it. There’s a 1” tall Glowforge logo in the middle of this aluminum business card.
You should try it for science but I wouldn’t expect too much.
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I’ve done a little poking around as I was curious about the true power of the Aura.
In my opinion, it’s probably about 10% (at best) of a legacy Glowforge.
By way of analogy, imagine pushing something with a certain force, and you’re able to move it. For some lightweight objects, pushing with 10% of that force would still be able to move them, it would just take more time. For heavy objects, however, it doesn’t how long you push for, you simply will never be able to overcome the initial inertia to get it moving.
That’s what I think happens with a low power laser. I doesn’t matter how much you slow it down, for certain materials, it simply will never be able to cut or engrave.
Wood and other “soft” materials are easier to punch through.
Don’t want to be a debbie downer but evansd2’s experiment pretty much supports that. It would also explain why the iPhone settings don’t show up with the Aura.
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The official Aura launch video shows an engraved iPad coming out is the machine.
Support said in the discord they haven’t released the official settings yet. Many material settings don’t show up in the Aura yet. They added a handful just a few days ago.
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I tried engraving on my old MacBook; it didn’t make a mark on it.
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thank you for try this and I’m sorry for my delay answer.
I believe i should not even try this. But I’m very curious why they advertising it?
What if i bought it only to do engrave on the iPad.? This is very misleading.
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Thank you very much for letting me know this.
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Do they specifically advertise engraving ipads with the aura? I know it’s something you can do with the pro/plus/basic. Maybe I got the test wrong, maybe the purple was the problem?
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Yes if you check their main video (at 1.05) on their youtube Chanel about the aura you can see it how “easy” can do it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kdLr1-hjk
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Yeah it sure does.
So some aluminums have a special type of anodization that is designed to engrave well – the ipad offers engraving from apple so maybe they have that kind of surface treatment. I have a dog tag that is that way, let me try it real quick. Back in a bit.
OK I actually dropped the speed to 2 instead of 10 as well, to give it the highest chance. Lowest speed, highest power, on a gold anodized aluminum dog tag.
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Thank you
I will give it a try on those settings and i will let you knkw
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Yeah so it worked mostly.
It is punishingly slow. A single square inch Glowforge logo takes about 3 hours. I pulled my tag out early, no way was I waiting that long for this test. You should be able to get the idea from what I did do.
The engrave isn’t the best contrast, I’d say that two passes (and twice the time) would probably get better results.
The Glowforge video is definitely marketing magic. With a little (terrible) photo editing you can get a better contrast:
I’m not saying that GF necessarily altered their video to look better, but I’m not not saying it. They clearly process their videos very carefully — they look great, but they may not reflect the exact way things look outside of a studio photo shoot.
If a square inch took three hours I can’t even imagine how long that iPad took. And again, I’m not using an iPad so it might be possible to engrave apples aluminum at higher speeds, I can’t say.
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Holy cow.
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