Engraving faded

Hopefully the picture shows up. I engraved some letters that came out good. The second set not so bright. Same settings. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks

Couple of things you can check, or questions to ask…

Did both of those prints come off of the same sheet of material? (One looks like cast acrylic, the other looks like extruded. But it might just be the angle that the light is hitting in the photo.)

If you brush or rinse the one that shows white, does the white go away? (Might be dust.)

It’s on the same material. Cast acrylic on the same sheet. I cleaned them both. Maybe change the settings. Just trying to figure out what settings I should be using for the white to show

The default engrave settings for PG acrylic will mark like the upper one. A significant reduction in power will cause it to look like the lower one. So either the setting was changed and you didn’t notice, or the machine is not working correctly.

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Oil on acrylic engravings will reduce light scattering and make it look more transparent. Could that be it?

Tell, you the truth…acrylic can pull some weird tricks sometimes. If that’s the same sheet and you used the same settings, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe try a third one and see what happens?

I got it. Turns out the depth of the focus was off. Thank you for your help as well as everyone else. Appreciated as always

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Great! Glad it was something simple.

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Ah, you did a defocused engrave - remember that because at some point in the future you’re going to want to do that again :slight_smile:

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Yeah I made a note on my depth and engrave speed for future designs :slight_smile:

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I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve hit this snag, but I’m glad to hear that you were able to resolve it quickly by checking the focus height of the material. I’ll close this thread for now, but please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly at support@glowforge.com if you run into any more trouble. We’re here to help!