Hey, all. I’ve been thinking about this and I don’t have a solution. I wanna do some engraving on some 0.75" or even 1" thick wood… I know I can remove the crumb tray and I can make “stilts” so the surface of my material ends up within the 0-0.5" focus area for Glowforge… but what can I do for alignment? I typically use Snapmark, but that’s not really an option without being a TOTAL pain in the neck (I’m imagining separate stilts so my jig/template with the Snapmark can sit within the 0-0.5" focus and then somehow get my material to sit on its own stilts… but that’s a lot of moving parts and very easy to miscalculate. I’m just wondering if anyone might have a more elegant solution for this?
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The set focus tool gets many of us really good alignmment as do the positioning coordinates. A jig, however, is best for precise alignment.
You might find this useful: Updated grid for engraving without crumb tray
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My solution involves getting a piece of cardboard and taping it between two chunks of 2x4. I use double sided tape to stick the 2x4s to the base of my Glowforge.
Now you can cut your jig out of the cardboard using set focus and then butt your material up to it as per usual with a jig. It is flawless more or less.
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I just stack spare material to bring it up to the correct height. I’ve also used a book. As far as snapmarks, you can make your own guide using them, and just tape it to the target object.
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When trying to push any machine far beyond what it is designed to do, it will be a Total pain somewhere. Like cutting plywood with sissors, even achieving will be a mess.
Still when I first tried pushing that envelope I needed to get it done whatever the mess. After making several hard cuts I realized that increasing times cut no matter the power more energy was lost to the sides of the cut than made it to the bottom.
It was this insight that sparked the answer. If I engraved rather than cut, and if the engrave went in a quarter inch, what was left was a quarter inch thinner for the next pass. Engraving both sides is something I do all the time.
The technique is spelled out here that once you lock in the location as long as you do not move things in the screen or bottom It will keep hitting the same place over and over. You
will need to keep lowering the focus point and it will continue to complain, but as long as you don’t move top or bottom no matter what it says, it should work out, ugly but done. You will likely need sandpaper to clean it up.
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Oh, you might find this handy for checking the focus height of your material -
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