Etch or Score - Can I adjust line thickness?

[nancyamartin]

I want to add a design to a piece of patterned acrylic. I used Score but the lines are too thin. After adjusting the line thickness of the design in Illustrator (changed to 4 pt from 1 pt) I ran it again but the score line remained the same thickness. Then I tried switching to Etch function but all that does in fill the design in with the etch. What I really want is just some thicker lines that will show the design better. If I leave the design open (ie, change from a closed circle to a circle with a small break), will that work?

[deirdrebeth]

May I suggest a discussion for you to read

Fun With De-Focused Score - time saver experiment

I decided to take some time and experiment with the de-focus score (thickness adjustment) concept. I chose this butterfly design specifically because it took a lot of fiddling to get it to work in a 3 step process. Engrave body, engrave wing, cut design. I was working with it as nodes primarily. Maybe a better way to do it, but it was what I used to finally get it to laser in 3 steps the way I wanted it to. First part of the experiment worked well, in that it took me just a few minutes to mak…

[Jules]

@nancyamartin

If I leave the design open (ie, change from a closed circle to a circle with a small break), will that work?

No, not really. Score is always the same thickness, exactly one line width of the beam. (And it’s a pretty narrow beam.)

It’s possible to slightly defocus the Score, which will give you a lighter, shallower, slightly wider burn line, but it’s limited.

If you want to make the lines wider, you would want to use an outside design program like Illustrator or Inkscape, Offset the lines, and Expand the results into a Filled Compound Shape that can be Engraved. That will give you a uniform result.

[nancyamartin]

Thanks! I used your suggested method and it worked like a charm! I’m not very good with Illustrator but with a decent book, I can struggle thru. Now all I have to do is remember what I just did.

[nancyamartin]

Wow, I can tell you are waaaay more advanced than me. I’ll definitely keep this method in mind once I get a big more confident. I can see the application would have many uses. Thanks so much for your time.

[deirdrebeth]

Not my method, but yeah - it’s not complicated once you’re in the trenches, but it’s quite a leap that first time!

[brokendrum]

@nancyamartin

keep this method in mind

Here is another example that is better, or at least more straight forward. Shows/explains scoring thick line instead of engraving.
Rule seems to be double the thickness/depth for fast line score.
(Good a place to start as any, I suppose).

Memory matching game

LOTS… You probably cannot take that image and just score it because it would try to do an outline (minus fill) type action. While this double score may work for you, I saw problems with that approach. I ran into this when I made a True Single Line font out of the Neoneon font. Just telling it to score did not do what I wanted. It required I redo the entire font as a true single line. Then the fun started. I did font engrave, then did scoring tests using TrueSingleLine with slight placement …

[jeremyh]

There are some excellent suggestions from our users @deirdrebeth, @Jules and @brokendrum . Would you let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns?

[Mike.D]

Hello @nancyamartin

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.