Cork?

[mandrade446]

Hey guy! So starting a project for a friend and he wants cork coasters. Anyone have the setting used for cork? Thank you so much in advance!

[CMadok]

How thick is the cork? Are you cutting it or just engraving it? Settings that are not proofgrade are usually found in the beyond the manual section of the forum. They might already have some there if you search, but if not, I’ll have to move this post to another section and it can be discussed in this thread. I have some saved, but I’m on my phone right now. I buy cork sheets in different thicknesses though, which is why I asked if you’re cutting.

[CMadok]

These are my old setting I had saved for cork, you’ll want to test them on some scrap because I haven’t used them in a while and I think some were adjusted when glowforge made some updates, because I’ve never set any speed to 204 or 999.

[tjones]

I had some 1/8” coasters that I bought in bulk from Amazon. I am pretty sure I used Engrave 1000/10/1/270 and they came out pretty good. But the design was pretty clear, simple, and contrasty. Your mileage may vary.

Edit This was with a GF Pro (the old one, not the new kind)

[CMadok]

I’ll have to try those settings. I can’t remember the last time I engraved cork, but my settings seem a little high looking at it now.

[dklgood]

I have engraved cork from several different sources. I start with 1000/20/270 and adjust as needed. I find it to be one of the more forgiving materials for engraves.

[linefeed]

And uncooperative for cutting…

[tim1724]

@linefeed

uncooperative for cutting

… unless you happen to enjoy that smoking, charred look.

[linefeed]

It’s been 2 or 3 years and I’m still finding tiny bits of charred cork around my workroom…

[evansd2]

For simple cuts thin cork works well in a performance machine. I keep a soft brush handy to remove the loose char, it goes well. Dice tray liners in particular.

Dice Tray Time Redux

[image] Figured Walnut hardwood, Padauk inlay, Cork, dice awesomeness A gift for friends, who struggle to keep their dice on the table. This is a remake of an older design, you may have seen it here: The centerpiece of the design is an inlay of the D&D logo in nicely contrasting padauk. It’s always hard to capture how striking this is, the chatoyancy of the padauk makes the inlay really stand out. [1] [image] I used relatively small fingers, and intentionally left them long so they’d…

[deirdrebeth]

I feel like up to about 1/8" you can make it work, but over that it just absorbs all the energy and you get a thicker and thicker char line but no additional cutting any deeper!
Cork would have been a great use of the material flipping was trying to make work way back when.

[evansd2]

Cork cloth works well too, I remember a post about it ages ago.

[dklgood]

I just exhumed my cork cloth to line some bedside trays. Actual cork is not something I have had a great deal of success cutting with the laser. As noted earlier, it absorbs the heat.

[dan84]

1000 speed, 10 power are my settings for cork as well. It doesn’t take much to turn cork black, and too much will create ash that needs rinsing off.

[dwardio]

@deirdrebeth

feel like up to about 1/8" you can make it work

Agreed. The only cork cuts I’ve done were for gaskets out of sub-1/8” sheet cork.

[svilayat]

I use these settings for engraving on cork with good results. Good luck

[deirdrebeth]

Welcome to the community and thanks for sharing!