Hi all. I am a new Aura owner, and I’m new to this community. I’ve been trying to find answers to my many questions, but I have a few questions that seem new. Thank you in advance for the support!
1- I purchased Craft Closet 1/8" Baltic Birch (unfinished) after seeing that it was recommended by several people. I also found the spreadsheet of Aura settings for non-proofgrade materials. The settings don’t seem to work on my machine, and I’ve tried to test them. But, the manual settings on that chart have a max 10 speed while my manual settings go up to 400. Help!
2- Is there a right side and wrong side to this 1/8" Baltic Birch (unfinished)?
3- Am I correct that this unfinished wood then should be stained or painted?
4- Are there tips for releasing cuts that don’t go all the way through? I had this happen with a proofgrade material which was frustrating. I used an xacto knife.
5- I admit I did not expect so many simple functions would be Premium dependent. I’ve seen several design programs suggested. Is there a best option for someone with Cricut Design Space experience? Am I correct that in another program, you can create layered svgs. Once these layers are uploaded to the Glowforge app, you then can name them as engrave, score, or cut?
Many thanks in advance. I’m equally excited and frustrated at this point, and your help will keep the frustration from taking over!
1: There’s a post that can answer almost all of your settings questions, as well as talk about how to find the correct ones if you’re testing a new material.
2: Baltic birch is basically the same on each side, but it does have a grade. Typically you will get B/BB grade, where the B side is free of patches and the BB side may have some. Patches are usually either “football” or “bowtie” shape. You can inspect your plywood to be sure you know which is which and the patches are easy to see. The trickier issue is voids, knots, or patches on the inside layer where you can’t see it. There’s a trick there that you might want to use:
3: Painting and staining first is generally ok, and sometimes can get great results. Check this out:
4: The easiest thing to do is be sure that you’re using the right settings from the start. If you’re not getting all the way through it probably means your settings aren’t quite strong enough. That said, sometimes materials will have defects or inconsistencies that cause incomplete cuts and xacto is one of the best solutions in that case. It all comes down to the math: is the time and effort to finish this cut manually with a razor worth it or should you run the job with altered settings to try to get a better result? That’s going to be up to you on a case-by-case basis.
5: You aren’t the first to be surprised there. With the Glowforge file layers are ignored, but colors aren’t. If you want to group things, colors are the key – e.g., if you have 5 shapes that are the exact same shade of red and 5 others that are the exact same shade of blue it’ll be two separate steps in the glowforge interface, where the steps are ordered by their color hex code from lowest to highest. In this example, it’s most likely blue followed by red as blues tend to have lower hex values than reds. You can learn a lot more about this in this post:
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That should get you going. You’re asking really good questions, I bet you’ll be up and running in no time. You might want to take a look at the FAQ I kept referring to, it has a list of topics that are probably things you’ll be interested in:
Your Aura power setting is max 10 - that is different than the speed setting which is higher.
Glowforge recommends that 1/8" plywood not be cut in the Aura because of the debris produced by the mdf filling. That being said, many people cut the items from Craft Closet and other vendors on their Aura. If items don’t cut completely, you can adjust your settings. An exacto knife works - as does sanding the back to release the incomplete cut.
I suggest you cut a few simple designs to become acquainted with the interface. Within designs you can assign elements to cut/score/engrave based on the element. The Glowforge interface does not recognize layers per se. Elements are differentiated by color, so use different stroke/fill colors when designing.
Good catch. What Glowforge used to say was that 1/8" plywood was not recommended. Now, however, I believe the recommendation is not to use draftboard. Here is the old statement:
When they listed “plywood” there, i’m sure they meant “proofgrade.”
that said, i could definitely see the Aura struggling with some regular plywood. not because of the mess it makes in the machines (like the PG plywood interior and draftboard), but because it may be more difficult to cut. but i don’t have an aura so i don’t really know for sure.
Thank you for this information! What a great help. I noticed I made a typo in my #1 question. I believe that the Aura used to have a max speed of 100, but the max speed is now 400. The spreadsheet in the forum (with suggested settings for non-proofgrade materials for the Aura) only shows settings up to 100. I’m wondering how to adjust and utilize this additional available speed. Any thoughts on this?
Thank you for all of this help. I saw information about the ordering of layers by color, but I didn’t realize I had any control over that. Is it possible to change colors in the Glowforge app? Or is that useful when working through another application? I did just find the option to “paste as a new step” which should be helpful even if I can’t change colors.
I’m a big fan of inkscape but I’m not sure how directly things from cricut design space will translate to any of them. Cricut has its own way of naming things and there’s probably going to be a learning curve no matter which way you go.
Inkscape is fully free and feature-rich. When I made the transition from cricut over to Glowforge, inkscape was no trouble to learn.
I think I found a work-around. If I copy a shape, I can “paste as a new step”. Then, I can delete the old shape and change the function on the new shape.
Is there a desktop app? Yesterday, when speaking to the customer service representative, she said that I may want to try the desktop app. She directed me to a place to download this app, and I woke up this morning to try it. It seems that she directed me to the same “Glowforge WiFi Set Up” that I used when I first connected my machine. Further research is coming up empty. Here is the information I received:
Desktop App: To download the app (which may resolve the warped camera image and browser idle issues), please visit our setup page. Click “Start Setup,” and then click the orange button to download the application for Windows.
Thank you for your help! I’ve been very frustrated with Glowforge support. It started when I found the “Start Tutorials” link to be broken. I’ve found several broken links on their website; some of the instructional information on the “Learn” page are outdated. You all have been so helpful.
Yup that’ll make it a new step, but you can’t move elements into each others’ steps.
Just the fact that you’re asking these kinds of technical questions makes me believe that getting familiar with an external editor and using colors as part of your workflow is going to be your best bet.
Some people use Silhouette design software Business edition because it lets you export SVG files.
You used to be able to get it for $50, get the free version and then buy the upgrade online (maybe it was swingdesign.com and a couple other places where you could get it for that price, but I’m going by memory which is clearly far from perfect lol). I’m guessing you can still get it for that price.
It was easier for me to learn than trying to learn inkscape. I started with that (and then I moved on to Adobe Illustrator and I took a course to learn Adobe Illustrator).
I frequently have this problem now that my laser has some age on it and just doesn’t cut the way it used to. Here is my way of dealing with it…
I hold the design in place with my hand, making sure not to move it. Then I see if the surrounding material will wiggle just a bit. That means the outer cut is complete and I can lift the outer material from the unit. If it won’t wiggle, I rerun the cut and try again. If you have more cuts, continue with this process until everything has been cut successfully.
Obviously this works best for designs with minimal cut layers. It’s a nightmare for complex cuts. For my puzzles, I just set it to do 2 cut passes.
Ever tried the tape loop method? You make a little loop of tape sticky side out and see if you can gently lift the part out. (Assuming you’ve secured your material with pins)
Or the elevated material method? Place your material on risers (usually little offcuts of the material from earlier jobs) and cut. Clean cuts will be obvious, the material will fall down to the laser bed.
