Don't be afraid of the score

Yes, massive for some things.

How did you get the score so dark and the lines seem nice and wide? Is it just the image you chose? New to forging!

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Now the text is engraved, the flying monkey is simply using the proofgrade settings for scoring.

I was trying to get really dark score lines, and I read here that setting the focus to .5 would help. I think it did, but even with that, the only way I could get the look I wanted was to use full power and slow it down. As a result, it almost cut through the material. Would I be able to get better results by doing proofgrade settings (which use lower power and higher speed) and multiple passes? It’s on my list of things to test when I get my machine back. I was also thinking about trying to double up on the lines or perhaps some way to use engrave also, but I’m not sure which is better at this point.

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That’s the spirit! The only sure way to know a lot of these things is to experiment.

Also, how much a material will darken is partially about that material so you might have to do something other than just score or engrave to get something dark. That is a nice thing about mask materials; you can always spray them before demasking.

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Yeah, masking would help (if only I could get it to stick to gingerbread :crazy_face:)

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Icing 3d printer would do the trick but I know, you are wanting to do it on the :glowforge:

An icing 3d printer would be awesome though. :grin:

I was looking at one that prints chocolate, really cool! Expensive though!

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@paulw how would I know when to ‘draw the line’ of switching from scoring to engraving?

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When the design does not lend itself to being converted to paths (vectors).

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@eflguy I am only about 1 month in with my GFPro, but couldn’t you technically save any file as an SVG/PDF (probably others) that give you the option of ‘score’ and just do that?
I just did not know if there was a list of things not recommended based on how they would look.
Expanding my business and working to get more local business accounts and make things such as coasters etc with simple business logos and the time saved with ‘scoring’ seems fruitful.

A bitmap is never going to give you a score option - even if it’s saved into an .svg or a .pdf (which are both container files that can hold both vectors and bitmaps - even at the same time)
You’ll need to trace it in a vector program (like Inkscape) to get anything other than an engrave option.

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I found the proofgrade settings for score go beyond 50% of the way through the material - I found this out when the luggage tag I got at a :glowforge: appearance at a Maker Faire failed at the score line - so I’ve set a saved score setting that uses the same speed as Draft Score but 30% less power in order to leave more wood behind. You might test your Flying Monkey for strength before you send it out in the world!

and yes, I love the way score lines look :smiley:

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Technically speaking, you could calculate when the time to score was longer than the time to engrave by figuring out the lengths of your lines and adjusting for corner slowdowns blah blah. Practically speaking, cancelling jobs is cheap before the laser fires, so you can just ask the glowforge which takes longer. for a rule of thumb, a line of small hershey text is almost always quicker than an engrave. But: you should also test defocused engraves with low lines per inch, especially if no one if going to get that close. You can get down to about 35 lpi and still look kinda acceptable from a few feet away (especially for those of us old enough to remember dot-matrix draft mode)

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A little tangential but has anyone tried scoring glass? I have some art that would definitely look great scored and I want to try putting it on some glass discs.

That question belongs in its own thread in Beyond the Manual.

There is but one way to find out. I would think it would work fine as long as the lines are not too close together. But that can be a problem with other materials as well.

Give it a go and let use know.

Hi! New to GlowForge and trying to score instead of engrave Apple Watch band using speed 205, precision power 35 and focus depth 0.108 and it barely did anything! Any advice?

A silicon band is unlikely to show much with a score because it doesn’t blacken. You should do a search on here for other folks doing watch bands - or run tests on your material.

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I love using score. It’s so much faster than engraving! I tend to make my designs mostly using scoring if I can. :slight_smile:

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