Etching clear Acrylic and getting clean results

Beyond the Manual
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What is everyone using to get good results when doing large etches on clear acrylic?

I had a large etch to do, and HD etch said it would take 5 HOURS. Naturally, I’m not going to do that, so I reduced it to SD etch which only took one hour. All said and done, I could live with the lines, but the etch was inconsistent across the entire image, so it almost looks lenticular. Not the look I am looking for. Is there another way to get a clean, consistent etch across the acrylic to be more like a frosted glass? This etch went half the depth of the acrylic, and not really what I need.

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Defocusing has been discussed as a pretty good solution.

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It’s a good idea to test a small sample with a representative portion of your design before committing to a full print.

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Time is what it is. Five hours to do it right and two for not-right, I would not expect a way to do it right to be much faster.

However, a quick pass with height set at 0.5 might smooth rather than cut.

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Also test the LPI settings–often less power, higher LPI gets better result–alas, not a faster method, though. As was suggested, run some small tests to find what setting you like best…

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That did it exactly. Thank you!

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This question is outside our team’s scope. I’ve moved it to the Beyond the Manual so the discussion can continue there.

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