I’m trying to make a rubber stamp - following various YouTube tutorials etc and I’m just not getting the same readings that allow me to follow along step by step. Does anyone know of a comprehensive tutorial on this? Also do I need Glowforge premium for this - and is it a worthwhile investment?
It’s difficult to know how to help without knowing a bit more detail, like:
—what rubber are you using (stamp rubber vs laser polymer)
—what software are you using (free software that will get you there is Gimp or Inkscape)
—where in the process is it not making sense or not working for you
The good news is that you do not need Premium although it might make it a little easier for a beginner.
Also, if you search this forum for Rubber Stamp you will find a lot of resources.
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I bought the orange rubber stamp material recommended on one of the many tuts I’ve watched.
When you ask about software - do you mean for the image/drawing part. I used A. Illustrator to make the png /svg images.
Once I import the image into glowforge app , I click on the stamp maker icon - it processes that and then on the left screen it creates 3 windows . In the first window I should be selecting engrave or deep engrave but already it’s saying my material is unidentified. I searched rubber, stamping, etc in the materials list but none of it is there. This is the step that prevents me from going any further.
I went ahead and purchased the premium pkg.
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The reason it’s showing as unidentified is because the material isn’t from GF “proofgrade”-they don’t make stamping rubber. You will need to put in your own settings. Once you put them in, you can save them as i.e. orange stamping rubber so you don’t have to create them everytime. You do this by clicking the + sign and naming the settings.
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Here’s some suggested settings to get you started:
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Welcome to the forum.
I think you have received some good advise from @cynd11 which should help with this project. I would also like to suggest that you work through the Glowforge tutorials and become familiar with the interface. Also, materials are expensive so I suggest you make a couple of practice items using cardboard, cardstock or scraps before cutting your rubber to insure that your stamp will look the way you want.
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I keep running into solutions and then I end up with new issues . When I try to manually set the engrave function - and save it it keeps reverting back to the default settings . When I set the custom material it doesn’t give me the option to save it.
I better go reread everything I’ve seen and rewatch everything I’ve watched 
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As long as what you’re reading/watching is either on support.glowforge.com or this forum that’s good advice. Wait on the random advice from others until you’ve had success here.
The link @cynd11 posted above gives a very nice walkthrough to go along with:
https://support.glowforge.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033633574-Working-With-Manual-Mode.
If you get stuck along the way, come back to this post and let us know “I got to x step but when I try to do y, this happens instead.” and one of us will walk you through!
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Ok I’m back. 
I made my first stamp, its adorable. I think I have all the settings, materials, engrave depth etc figured out well enough for a start. Now I think the next problem is how my artwork is being set up. My first stamp was a heart shape. It was fairly easy to figure out where the engraving of the rubber stamp material would take place. But what if I’m doing something thats the opposite of that. For example, if I wanted to create a rubber stamp with my business name and address on it then would the imported image be a black space with white text, or visa versa? Somewhere in that process I’m missing the common sense. I’ve been following a tutorial I found on here (@ebrennan) but I keep ending up with the machine engraving out the text instead of everything behind the text.
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What you have to keep in mind is that when dealing with a stamp, every part of the stamp surface that presses into the paper is the unengraved part. So you have to engrave away everything that you don’t want touching the paper. If you’re dealing with text, then make sure all of the background is black (which causes the Glowforge to engrave it away) and the text is white (no engraving). A simple case would be to create rectangle filled with black, and center your text in the box, making the text white. Of course with text (or any other direction-critical image) you do have to do a horizontal flip so the text will read correctly when stamped.
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Just wanted to note that this applies to raster image engraves only.
If you’re using vector artwork color only matters for separating steps. So you would have to knock out the text from the black rectangle to get the same result .
To keep it easy - rasterizing vector artwork before uploading instead will help keep unexpected things from happening.
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Using a raster image seemed to have fixed the issue with the wrong spaces being engraved . But (hopefully you can see this image) the engraving is very very shallow . I used the engrave settings of 80 speed , 50 power , 225 lip, and 3 passes . Which numbers should I be adjusting to get a deeper engrave?
Either increase power or decrease speed: https://support.glowforge.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033633574-Working-With-Manual-Mode
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Something is wrong if you were at 80 speed and got such a shallow engrave. The settings I was recommending had the speed at 220. Are you certain that you are using laserable stamping rubber? What you are showing looks like there are fibers running through it. If it’s fiberglass, you’ll never get through it.
It would be helpful to know what model machine you are using.
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My machine is a Glowforge Aura. It’s brand new to me. The stamp material is for laser machines. I think I’ve got a good thing going right now. I’ve been doing very small sample engraves and switching up the settings. I also thickened the lines of my image. So my most recent has a nice engrave and did a nice stamping. I used the settings : 30 speed/5 power /205 lpi/ 3 passes. I’ll add a picture here. Now I think i’m ready for my first real stamp. Mind you all of my stamps are going to be large. The full scale stamp I’m loading now is 5.5" x 5.5" . I’ve got it loaded and ready to go- but it says it’s going to be 15 hours. Does that seem reasonable ?
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Okay, I suspected that was an Aura. That means all the settings advice I’ve been giving you is wrong, since it’s intended for the Performance series. The engrave time you mention sounds totally appropriate under the circumstances. I’m actually surprised you can even engrave laser rubber in the Aura so I think you’re on the right track. Good results so far and best of luck going forward!
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No, not really reasonable, but probably true. The Aura is SO slow…especially compared to using my old GF basic for so long.
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Just wanted to stop back and let you know I have successfully completed 2 large rubber stamps! Learned a lot from all of you and couldn’t be more grateful! Thanks so so so much !
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