Proofgrade

Of course I am guessing Seattle isn’t famous for wild swings in humidity. If this would be an issue at all, it would mostly affect people that live in deserts ordering materials that had acclimated to the temperate rainforest biome that is northern Washington state! I lived in Arizona for 15 years, and it wasn’t unusual to see single-digit humidity readings there for months at a time!

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Well, if Q&A time permits, being in a location which sits on the high end for standard humidity is ideal, since drying wood out is a pretty well solved issue and there will be readily available methods to dry wood and compare how it reacts to various settings.

Would be a nuisance to be testing in a low humidity area and have to decide precisely how humid to make the wood to get a feel for reasonable conditions.

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I live in a place where the humidity goes from the single digits in winter to the near-triple in summer. So yep, I think this will probably be an issue for adjustment. (I have to do different things with my 3d printer in different seasons too.)

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@dan Will the Glowforge have some preset settings for standard materials that may not be Proofgrade? For example:

  • 80 GSM paper
  • 200/250 GSM card
  • 5mm cardboard

Alternatively, if we do not have a Proofgrade sample, can we still search the Proofgrade material settings by name/type so we have a starting point for own new materials?

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Yes, this seems like it would be incredibly useful.

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This is one of those things that comes up in this forum a lot because it seems like such an obviously helpful idea… without reposting a longer explanation: it does more harm than good, unfortunately, since materials are more likely to be different than the same, and because we don’t want to be responsible for people using the wrong settings, so it’s unlikely.

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Should be pretty quick to run a few tests. I’m sure someone will make a test file and share it. Probably a good idea to run it on pretty much any materials you’ll be using. I plan on running it for proofgrade as well just to have a visual of what’s what.

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how about a free test pattern in the store or UI of various powers and speeds then?

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Ive actually been developing a test sheet. and its a bit more complicated that i expected. And, it can end up taking up a fair bit of space. This would require a large or expensive sacrificial part. Once we have a handle on the UI for the GF it think it would be relatively strait forward to develop our own that fits our individual needs.

I currently plan on have 2 different tests. One that optimizes for 3D engraves and one the optimizes for cut speed and quality. Then depending on the project i can try one or both. and minimize waste.

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Most of the test patterns I’ve seen/used are fairly small to minimize usage, e.g.:

And perhaps even better:

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Those are awesome and totally useful. (i hadnt seen them and am totally going to use em.)

That said, the test looks to me like it is for a set speed and varies power around the circle. (please correct me if im wrong) but if you wanted to optimize for speed you would have to cut a couple of them and see how that changed the results.

Its not a big deal. All i was getting at is that one test document is going to have a difficult time capturing all the capacities of the machine in one go. If you wanted to learn about the effect of varying speed and power, you would have to have a row of the circle (power) tests, each at a different speed.

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Yep. Check out the link to Joe’s post I copied above… It had an image of a speed vs power engraving test grid. Similar ones for cutting are likewise “out there.”

Teaser…

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Definitely going to be using that that thingiverse file! Thanks!

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Asking from a curiosity standpoint. @dan, @madebynick, @rita or anyone else from GF, or really anyone who uses a laser frequently (@smcgathyfay) . From your experiences, what is the most “stable” non-proofgrade material? I mean, what material is the most consistent from manufacturer to manufacturer and from piece to piece? I know it wouldn’t be wood or plywood, but what about acrylic, delrin, leather, paper, cardboard, stone, etc…?

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I wouldn’t list myself among the regular laser people. But in my experience with my little Chinese laser, cast acrylic is the winner for consistency. Now you can get different kinds of cast acrylic (I wouldnt try to cut this). But in my experience, cheap cast acrylic is cheap cast acrylic.

I would put cardboard in second place. cardboard is actually a pretty tightly controlled product. The difficulty is find the same type of cardboard. if you find 20 boxes in the garbage, you will likely have 12 different kinds of cardboard.

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Cast Acrylic and chipboard (the paper/cardboard stuff from Blicks or other art supply places).

Of course there are some other things that are pretty consistent - paper, foam insulation panels, etc that are pretty consistent but I don’t have much use for them so don’t really think they’re material here.

True Baltic Birch plywood is pretty consistent but you do want to keep an eye out for surface (both sides) anomalies. Tend not to get glue pockets and voids in 1/8 or 1/4" BB.

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Ummm probably paper LOL even acrylic differs depending on the colour sometimes which is what I use most.

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My hopes initially where but I’m sure won’t be ready. Where to have the gf have a built in calibration run that would have a test pattern and then the high res camera and depth finder be able to figure out things like depth of engrave width of kerfs and save all of those results and update the ui So you can apply what degree you want for each and use the learned kerfs to cut the part true to design and the learned engrave depths to then say how deep do you want this engrave. I think that would all be so awesome, I think the hardware is there to do it but maybe not the code

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MDF is another contender for consistency. I think. Don’t know too much about it, but the material is quite dense, and from what I understand it is just sawdust and glue. So the only possible variation is what kind of sawdust and what kind of glue. But for all I know, it also has variance in density.

Test patterns like the Thingiverse one are nice for makerspaces and other shared environments, or for mega long-term personal memory. They are worse than useless for one-off work.

These patterns take up a LOT of space, and they run cuts you KNOW are useless. This is because it is a one-size-fits-all solution, and intended for visibility.

When I am working with new material, I have a reasonably good guess about what power level and speed I want to use, based on experience with other similar materials. I have never worked with leather, so when I work with something like that I will be out in the dark. But I know it will take more than paper, I suspect it will take roughly the same as similar thickness wood.

You choose whatever material you can afford to give up, and run a few low power and/or high speed cuts there. Sometimes you just run the same cut multiple times. This will give you a sense of what power you are looking for. When one of your guesses finally cuts through, or makes the color/depth you are hoping for, then you are set.

Quite likely you can accomplish all of this testing in under one square inch of space. It will get you close enough to finish your job at hand.

If you have no spare material at all (not even planning to cut anything away), like engraving the back of your phone… then you are best going with the multiple passes at high speed and low power. You just don’t move the material until you are certain you approve, or you have a jig which allows you to return to precisely the same position for touching it up.


So, again… test patterns are awesome. But don’t always insist on getting one, and allow yourself to play around a bit. There are cases where it is rather inappropriate to bother with a test pattern.

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fully agreed. This is where my proposed idea is great because it uses a set of controls and would hive it into the cloud So other people can pull it down and have a general place to start from. Heck include the barcode for the material and store bought from etc… Sure there is vacation in thins but at least you get a start point. The hope would also be as the machine cuts its evaluating and making real time adjustments

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