I got my Aura yesterday and everything cuts great on proofgrade black acrylic and basswood but every cut I try on the orange will not go all the way through. I’ve tried multiple times. I have tried the same prints on black and it does fine. The aura is reading the QR code and the material is correct on my screen. I’ve tried very simple shapes, just a circle and it will not cut all the way through. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: Glowforge support just contacted me and let me know that they had made changes to the Eco Thin Orange profile and had me clear out my cookies and try another print, and now it works!
I don’t have the Aura, but from what I read it will not cut the lighter colored acrylics that well. My suggestion would be to try multiple passes, or try a slower cut speed.
Early on I did a lot of acrylic, both PG and otherwise and found that there was a range of results of the cut depending on the material itself. Some would cut all the way through and then melt back together before the job was finished. I had some sparkle acrylic that the sparkles turned out to be pieces of mica that were laserproof. Other stuff cut just fine and color had little I could see to do with it. This was on a pro.
The Aura is a much lower power machine, so the edge of what cuts and what does not will be closer. I do not have one so can offer little advice but to try a wide variety of materials and record what does best, and go with that. I had a great many ideas when I bought my Glowforge, many of them will not work in this universe, others, like Zebrawood is so flammable as to be almost unusable.
I would suspect that things I can do on a pro may be beyond getting done on an Aura, but the details of how an Aura works will make things practical there and yet be a problem to accomplish with the pro. I fought that for years, but now focus on what I can accomplish much easier.
I was worried that my problem was the lighter color, but it is a Proofgrade Product with the words Glowforge Aura on the front, so it should work in the Aura… you would think. I sent in a ticket to support to see if they can help me. I’ll try slowing it down and see if that works.
You’re correct to assume that Proofgrade Aura-compatible material should work out of the box on an Aura.
Hopefully support can help you get it straightened out. Tweaking the settings for more power and/or slower speed is a good workaround while you wait for an answer.
Hi @queenieg This shouldn’t be your experience with your Aura, so please reach out to Support at support.glowforge.com if you already haven’t and our team will help you out! Thank you!
It’s nice to see staff participate here again. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s more efficient to submit a support ticket, but it does seem to indicate GF is starting to pay more attention to the community that got them started…
I have submitted a ticket and we are still trying to figure out why it won’t work. I will be sure to come back and update when we figure out what is going on. I did find that if I manually change my settings to Red Acrylic, it will cut through the orange but it smells really strong like its burning… so I hope to find a better solution working with Glowforge support.
The settings for black, red and orange acrylic are the same on the Pro. If your setting for Orange is different, I would just select a different material until they figure it out.
I rarely use pre-defined settings for cuts. I have my own saved for virtually every material I work with.
I think that the difference in the wavelength of the laser could have a profound effect on what colors can be cut by what color laser. In the infrared acrylic is much more universally opaque while a red laser would be much more sensitive to what the color was.
I sent in a ticket to support to see if they can help me. I’ll try slowing it down and see if that works.