This is true when using 3d engrave mode or “vary power”.
As for a canonical settings list I think that’s a challenge. While it seems like a great idea I don’t think it’ll happen for a couple reasons.
1: [opinion] we’re too small. We just don’t have critical mass to sustain yet another wiki, this forum is about all that a community of our size can wrangle.
2: [opinion] trust with “things that might burn my house down” will only be granted to official statements from an authority of some sort. You want to trust me not to burn your Glowforge up? I barely trust myself, so I don’t recommend it.
2.a [fact/opinion] if you accept #2… Glowforge will never issue an authoritative list of settings for lots of reasons. Here’s three: A- they don’t want the liability. B- they understand the user experience should be as perfect as possible and this is begging for disappointment (see item #3 below). C- (this is the big one) it’s not their business model. They want to sell proofgrade, not facilitate using other stuff
3: [fact] there’s no “one setting” for a material. There are jumping off points but even those are subjective.
Take engraving — want it darker? Ok pump power. Wait that was too deep? Ok slow it down and drop power. Oh wait or you could lower power and up LPI. Or maybe you could sand or oil your material for a different look. Or use masking(or not). Or multiple passes. What’s the moisture content in your particular sample of this material? Did you want to defocus? Above or below the surface? Want to score the edges after? Cut it out? Wait, are you using a pro or basic — full power is different between them.
There are probably more questions to ask, these are the ones that jumped to mind. There are similar questions with cutting. My point is that even between batches of a specific material, you have to test and adjust. I know this, and Glowforge definitely knows this, hence why proofgrade qr codes are batch specific.
So,… I guess I’m saying is that I think there are several reasons why this hasn’t happened, and while it might be handy, it’s probably not that much of an improvement over searching the forum, especially in that a forum post will often have lots more context that can matter a great deal.
There was a recent post that actually tried to quantify settings based on wood density. Very promising idea for intuiting some settings, but it’s still in its infancy.