Engrave By Color

See, and that’s exactly the kind of thing that wasn’t at all mentioned in documentation, and exactly the kind of thing I wanted to know. It makes perfect sense now that it’s been explained to me. But from my POV I’d say it’s not at all the kind of thing that is naturally obvious to a complete laser novice.

I think your explanation there really sums it up nicely for me. I’m excited to test when I get a chance!

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Since 3D engraving is unsupported, it’s by-design that a total novice couldn’t figure out how to do it from the documentation yet. :slight_smile:

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My opinion on that is I would have liked to see “We’ve given you the 3D Engrave option to take the guesswork completely out of it when using Proofgrade materials. However, if you’d like to take a manual approach or use non-Proofgrade materials, here’s a good place to start…, but you’ll need to experiment on your own to try and achieve good results.”

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Yes. We’ve decided not to give half-directions on things that might not work out, but instead to put that effort into documenting and supporting fully things that we feel confident we can make great. For the rest, we have the forum. I learn things here too. :slight_smile:

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I can understand that, I suppose. Still, I would have preferred something documented.

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You and me both. Sometimes it is a challenge to dig out all the information, but remember this post from way back? I finally came to the same conclusions about power and speed settings with @takitus. We have so needed to collate all this information.

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Gosh… The basketweave pattern! Seems like forever ago! I’ll have to revisit that.

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Are the jaggies actually visible (with a microscope)? With the spot being ten times bigger and having and indistinct edge due to the Gaussian distribution I will be surprised if they are.

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From everything I have read here, I still think that the reason the hearts are “engraved” so deeply is that they were using the “cut” settings. You mentioned the wood was thicker than the laser can cut. So that depth is the cut depth based on the material you told it was in the machine.

SVGs, as I understand it, group all of the vectors of a particular color into a set. So if you had red, green, and black vectors, you’d have three sets.

Each set is assigned an operation: cut, score, engrave. And each can be assigned specific settings for power, speed, etc.

By default, black vectors are assigned “cut”.

(Again, I don’t have a laser, but that’s what I’ve picked up from the forum. And that’s why the black of the dress did not equal the depth as the black SVG.

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If it was a cut operation wouldn’t it have just cut along the outline, not carved out a pocket.

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Thanks. But I’ve been pretty clear the entire time that they were all set the exact same way. Besides, you can’t set anything with a fill to cut.

I haven’t found that to be the case. In fact, it always seems to be correct when it picks the operation for things. I’m guessing that’s based on being filled or not.

I think Dan’s recent suggestion is probably going to be the answer. I just got tied up working on another project last night. Maybe tonight I’ll get the chance. I’ll post the result here, of course.

Indeed.

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Tom, there’s a big difference between engrave on an svg and a raster. They had to change the power curve for raster to come out looking good.

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Correct. Fills are assumed to be engraves and lines are assumed to be cuts. Colors just separate the objects so you can re-order them in the GFUI or change the operation (when allowed - like cut to score).

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Right. I’m seeing that very clearly now. :slight_smile:
Which is why trying to reproduce depth as seen in the Glowforge medallion is making no sense to me.
But as soon as I possibly can (tonight, please, Wife and kids?), I’ll try Dan’s suggestion. I understand what he was saying and I think it’ll do the trick. And I understand the limitations of what he described, so I’m not expecting perfection. I’ll happily post my results and interpretation of them as soon as I have them. :slight_smile:

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So does it just ignore the fill if you tell it to cut or score a filled vector shape?

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Ah. Thanks for the correction.

It’s not that you need to increase contrast, it’s that you are likely to prefer the output if you do. But its pretty subjective and you certainly lose detail that someone else may want. I can see options in the tools to boost it but it would be challenging to do automagically.

At lower resolutions, yes. Higher resolutions, no. What resolution they appear at depends on the material.

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Yes. The operation choice is convert to cut or convert to score. It defaults to engrave.

Wow… I got getting a .3" engrave at 100/84/340. That’s insane! (And probably pretty useless as an engrave setting.) It was marvelous to watch though. But I canceled the job after a few minutes. Wasn’t very safe and wasn’t at all worth letting it finish. But it was a GREAT little test.

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