Does anyone know of a list of materials and manual power/settings for use within the GF? Simple things like how to cut cardboard, or how to set up manual engraving on the reverse side of a piece of wood, where the printer can not scan the QR code.
anyway, any guidance would be appreciated.
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You’ll find settings scattered in older posts in Made on a Glowforge but they’ve asked those get posted in Beyond the Manual now. They’re in context of specific projects so you’ll have to do some spelunking.
For the QR code issue, you just have to click on the Materials link on the top left corner of the UI. It will give you a drop down that you can select the PG material you’re using.
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And if you wish to see the settings GF the company uses for Proofgrade materials, just select the material and then select manual settings instead of the cut or engrave by color. The actual settings will be displayed.
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The first thing I think you should know about cardboard is watch it like a hawk even with a good setting. One little spark inside the corrugation and you may have a fire. Second thing I suggest is keep a damp cloth handy. This should be all the fire fighting equipment you need. The third thing is it seems like every piece of cardboard needs slightly different settings. I’ve found that if you power through with plenty of power you have sooty edges and if you try for the Goldilocks settings you’ll wind up with a perforated punch out (my preference.) And finally, I recommend cutting and not engraving on cardboard.
Also, my starting point for 0.25" cardboard is 210 speed and 90 power.
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Actually they want settings (whether for 
Proofgrade or not) in Beyond the Manual now, which is where this post is as well.
Techniques that don’t include settings can be found all over the forum.
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Settings aren’t necessarily that simple. For example, you said “cardboard” like there’s only 1 kind of cardboard out there. There are good settings to be used for all sorts of cardboard depending on thickness, plies, corrugated vs chipboard, etc… Woods vary even more. So you’ll want to be careful when using somebody else’s settings for some material. Know the brand and specifics of the material to make sure it matches yours.
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Oops, you’re right. Editing my original response. Thanks for the catch.
You’re welcome 
Would love to see a table showing all the Proofgrade material settings for cut/engrave. No reason to make people mess around with the UI to get this information second-hand. Will help people make more informed choices when the default settings don’t work as expected.
Does this exist anywhere already?
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It’s included in the interface. You can select a material from a dropdown menu and it automatically populates the fields with the correct information for that material. (Sometimes the QR codes don’t scan correctly when they get placed too far over.)
That thread has a funny error example.
My guess is @takitus is looking at info in chrome to see those details. Again this would be manual for every material type.
Hoping a single reference exists so I don’t have to manually compile the information by going back and forth in the UI between manual/auto mode.
There is no reference material about anything. GF like it all to appear as magic. I expect a table could be generated from the JSON with a script. It would have to convert the metric units to the obfuscated GUI units.