I’m attempting to make table numbers by cutting and engraving black acrylic.
I made a very small tester/sample piece. The cutting was okay, but when I painted the engraved part white, but all you can see are ridges or waves.
I am still very new to glowforge and learing. I used my GF Aura and a cutting/engraving file from Etsy.
Engraving settings were
Speed: 400
Power 0.1
LPI: 135
of Passes: 1
I’m not sure what to change to make the engraving less wavy and noticeable.
Please don’t mind the messiness. After I painted I removed the protective sheet and then decided to try to do a second coat of paint. Then I tried to clean off the black acrylic and scratched it.
That can be a challenge with engraving acrylic. If I am remembering correctly, you can increase the LPI to get more overlap of the passes or do a defocused engrave to get it a bit smoother.
The easy approach is to use 2-layer acrylic, which lets you engrave through one layer (e.g., black) to expose the layer below (e.g., white):
This is not unusual when engraving acrylic. It’s been discussed many times in the past, here’s an example where I added a test piece that was engraved at different settings. The only way I’ve been able to deal with it is to play around like this until I find the setting that I’m happy with.
