Best settings for engraving and then painting?

[sherriemarie1976]

I am trying to engrave on black acrylic and then apply paint as I have seen before but my engraving lines are bumpy. Is there a special setting

I should use to get a smoother look so the paint looks crisp?

[evansd2]

The trick you’re looking for isn’t exactly a setting, it’s a focus thing.^[1]

The concept is called “defocusing”, you basically intentionally set the wrong material height on your engrave. Bunch of threads here:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=defocus%20acrylic

Great examples here from @takitus:

Defocused Acrylic Engrave - just do it

I was doing some work for a friend last night and decided to try defocused engraving on a .25" piece he’s going to backlight… The results were SOOO much cleaner. All my engraves on acrylic are going to be defocused from now on. I’d recommend the same to anyone: [image][image]

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1. Which I guess is technically a setting, but you get what I’m saying ↩︎

[sherriemarie1976]

Very helpful I am giving it a shot now. Does this mean after I adjust the settings to .2 and 170 LPI that i should not hit auto focus ?

[evansd2]

So you hit autofocus first, that sets the camera view in your UI for layout and visual alignment.

Then go into the settings for your engrave on the left and set the height manually. (see the bottom bit)

[rbtdanforth]

@sherriemarie1976

engraving lines are bumpy. Is there a special setting

I generally use very high LPI, especially with acrylic in order to get rid of all the bumps. Defocusing helps, but the waves remain. At 1355 LPI the waves are smaller than the detail.

[sherriemarie1976]

Thank you so much I cant believe how much it cut down on the engraving time ! How exciting. Thank you so much

[sherriemarie1976]

Not sure what happened I used clear acrylic 1/8 . So I tried the .20 and LPI at 170 but it almost looks like it barely engraved

[sherriemarie1976]

NVM I am an idiot . somehow full power was not on lol

[evansd2]

@sherriemarie1976

170

If that’s not a typo… 170 LPI is pretty low. I don’t know that I have the patience that @rbtdanforth does to go over 1000, but I’d probably invest the time to go at least 270, preferably 340. You do get noticeably smoother edges that way.

[sherriemarie1976]

Oh shoot I thought your video had 170 lol Thank you I will try again

[sherriemarie1976]

worked. Slowed the engrave time down but the outcome was smoother Thanks again

[evansd2]

@sherriemarie1976

Slowed the engrave time down

The change in focus by itself shouldn’t impact the engrave time. Only layout, speed, number of passes, and lpi have any impact on job duration.