Etching on 1-inch thick acrylic - blurry?

Hi all, I’m trying to etch a piece of 1-inch thick acrylic, and the text is coming out blurry. I did some digging and am wondering if I need to remove the crumb tray/bed because it’s too thick of a material for the GF to focus on? If not that, can anyone recommend settings for me to try, or any other ideas? Any tips appreciated, I’m still learning and unsure of myself/settings/etc.!

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Short answer – yes. GF works with materials slightly under 0.5 inches and thicker than that needs the crumb tray removed and some sort of lift to bring it up to proper focal height. There are a number of threads on this if you query “thicker materials” etc. and you could start here
:Cutting thicker woods

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I’m surprised your air assist fan shroud didn’t hit that material and cause real problems. Be careful.

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Yes. You need to remove the crumb tray to engrave on. Use some standoffs to bring up to a height within the focal range.

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I am surprised you actually got it do anything.

Max (on honeycomb tray) is 0.5 inch height.

Removing the tray give you about 1.4" depth adjustment (thus about 2" max material height)

With that in mind, your focus height only allows a 0.5 max measurement. With your 1 inch material, you will want to put 1 inch support material under the 1 inch acrylic to get a workable focus height.

Look into these community forum postings

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Thank you so much! I’m going to give this a go.