I bought some 1 inch thick maple so I can make some cool wooden platters or serving dishes and I’m trying to get some inspiration of cool things people came up with but can’t find much online. Anyone done this?
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Welcome to the forum.
Instagram is my go to place for ideas.
Your question made me wonder… wouldn’t it be nice if you could search these forums and get a more visual response… like all the images people have shared…
Then I realized Google’s image search could probably do this:
Check it out:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acommunity.glowforge.com+cutting+board&tbm=isch
by restricting to this site and using image search, you can get a visual search result from these forums, and then it links into individual posts where you could post a followup question as necessary.
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As long as you aren’t expecting to cut the 1 inch maple with the laser. That is too thick. It is also too thick to engrave with the honey comb tray in place so you will have to remove that and raise the wood up until the surface is within 1/2 inch of the head.
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I did google and what you just showed me are all cutting boards which isn’t what I asked for.
I just got it last week, I thought on the site it said up to 2 inches.
Oh that is a good html to save and adapt for picture viewing! Thank you @jestelle, that one is going in my bookmarks!
@escaparium, maybe you could elaborate on your description of what a “cool wooden platter” is in your mind? My idea of what you described is basically a wood engrave, although probably in the round. Cutting boards are an excellent jumping off point for creating your own idea, since most are engraved wood.
As for actually doing it, you would start with removing the cutting tray so you can fit the thick board in, but likely need to prop it up a bit to get it to the laser focus height. And although you can engrave on items that are up to 2" thick, cutting through them would take an insane amount of passes if it is even possible (not likely), and something like a jigsaw would do much quicker work!
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Awesome thanks.
You can fit material under the head that is 2" thick - but the laser is optimized for 1/8" to 1/4" material.
Folks have successfully done thicker, with multiple passes and a wider kerf. 2" would unlikely to be an acceptable cut, when the same could be accomplished with a saw blade in mere moments.
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What precisely are you looking for? I’ve seen people make very nice food platter presentations on laser engraved cutting boards, which is why I went that direction. But perhaps I just don’t quite get what you’re going for?
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The Venn diagram of “things to engrave on cutting boards” and “things to engrave on serving platters” is pretty much just one big circle.
Also, it’s generally considered polite to say “thank you” when perfect strangers go out of their way to help you, even if they didn’t do it exactly perfectly (and actually I thought @jestelle did a very nice job of it). 
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Yes you can use material up to 2" but you have to remove the crumb tray for that. The laser can only focus up to 1/2" which is the surface of the crumb tray. If your material is over 1/2" but under1 and 1/2" then it needs to be propped up to get the surface into the focus range.
Someone made this a while back:
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