Out of focus engraving

[BSheremeto]

Does anyone with a glowforge know if you can fudge the height settings to do out of focus engraving? Im specifically thinking of it for rear engraving acrylic and colour filling.

[marmak3261]

Yes, I have. It works well for certain applications, especially to have a mottled surface of the engrave rather than seeing raster lines.

Defocused Acrylic Engrave - just do it

I was doing some work for a friend last night and decided to try defocused engraving on a .25" piece he’s going to backlight… The results were SOOO much cleaner. All my engraves on acrylic are going to be defocused from now on. I’d recommend the same to anyone: [image][image]

[PFI-Guy]

I thought @takitus had been playing with “out of focus” tweaks, but others just changed the material height setting to create “out of focus”.

EDIT: Dang it, @marmak3261 types faster than me

[BSheremeto]

Perfect thank you.

If anyone has done it on clear acrylic I would love to see that as well just to get an idea of how clear it gets. I have alot of that use in mind for the laser

[kittski]

A few of us have tinkered with clear engraving. Something you can look into is extruded vs cast acrylic. Apparently extruded stays clear when cut vs getting white/cloudy like cast acrylic. (I’ve only cut a little bit of extruded, haven’t engraved it though.) I think a few others here have more experience with the cast and they might speak up

1/4" acrylic engrave comparisons

Continuing the discussion from Manual 3D Engrave Settings - ProofGrade Thick Clear Acrylic: I didn’t want to step on mpipes post where he did all the hard work and dialed in the settings for this, but wanted to share what I learned in case it could help someone. I used the settings mpipes recommended of 80/295/.07/340 lpi and two passes on the first two engraves. I didn’t have PG thick acrylic so used some from Inventables. It has a masking on it similar to PG, but is obviously slightly di…

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Manual 3D Engrave Settings - ProofGrade Thick Clear Acrylic

You don’t know how much your generous efforts are appreciated @mpipes. You probably saved me a sheet or two of acrylic and a several frustrating hours getting to this point. Thanks man. This is non-PG .23 acrylic (from Inventables I believe) set at 295/80 at .1 focus. It was my own hand-colored greyscale image and I’m really happy with the first effort. Some of the lines in the engrave are from the blending of the image and not the GF. The weird line at the elbow and the blowout at …

[dan]

You can using the focus setting in manual mode! I’m moving it to Beyond the Manual where you can get more help with it.

[mpipes]

@BSheremeto

If anyone has done it on clear acrylic I would love to see that as well just to get an idea of how clear it gets.

I’ve brought back a good amount of clarity in engraved acrylic by pouring acrylic weld solvent into the engraves and let it evaporate on its own.

This particular example was a fairly deep 3D engrave and I wasnt going for smooth finish from the laser, but tested the acrylic solvent bath and it did “polish” the frosted look pretty well.

I also tried 3D engraving some corner cube retroreflectors which turned out to be fails as far as reflectors go, but the texture is killer and the clarity after a few solvent baths is really good.

[BSheremeto]

Thanks, the solvent bath is a good idea. Im hoping to paint fill with multiple colours between engraves though so solvent is a no go… But i’ll keep it in mind.

[jamesdhatch]

@kittski

Apparently extruded stays clear when cut vs getting white/cloudy like cast acrylic.

Mostly clear anyway. But it is more brittle than cast acrylic.

[Dunfee]

Hey, so I want to start defocusing my engraves to speed up my engrave times. I get the general idea and I think I’m going to defocus so it is .25 above my material.
What should I do for my lines per inch? I usually engrave at 340 lines per inch? What should I bring it down to if I still want a fairly uniform engraves surface?