Howdy - new Glowforge owner here. In fact, I’m so new I haven’t even got my machine yet! I’ve been all over this forum and have learned a lot, though I feel extremely overwhelmed, and am totally doubting my abilities to make this work, but I think that’s just pre-GF jitters. Anyhoo…
I make jewelry as a side hustle and what I’m wanting to do is make a snowflake pendant out of acrylic and I want to be able to place a flatback Swarovski crystal in the center. I need to inset that crystal into the acrylic to protect the edges, so is there a way to do that with the Glowforge?
You should be able to. The challenge will be for you to measure the crystal accurately. If you can manage that the rest is easy. I am assuming that the crystal is hexagonal. It just sounds that way to me, especially with the snowflake design.
The way to do it would be to engrave a shape in the acrylic that matches the crystal, then glue it in with E6000 or whatever jewelry glue you prefer. You could start with the default settings for engraving acrylic and adjust them as needed.
Now is the time to learn a vector drawing program like Inkscape, Illustrator, Affinity Designer, etc. it will really pay off in the end.