- When cutting go for max power and fastest effective speed to minimize charring & kerf thickness
- When engraving adjust for max speed and dial power up to get maximum effective through put
- Acrylic (especially extruded) can benefit from multiple passes of lower power/higher speed than can cut in a single pass so that it doesn’t overheat a localized piece of the cut so it melts back into the cut.
- Use a calibration tool to establish power/speed settings for any new material you do - yes, you’ll be “wasting” material but you’re going to then have a piece of material that will give you and easy way to pick settings. I’ve posted a couple of calibration tools & instructions in Made on a Glowforge but they were for the old settings. They can be modified or you can wait for a bit and I’ll be updating those.
- Tell the GF that you’re using PG of some similar material and check out the settings it recommends by converting to manual cuts or engraves and looking at the settings.
- For engraves increasing the LPI will increase both the resolution of the engrave but also the depth.
- Don’t stress the finer settings levels - not a lot of difference between speed=1000 and speed =950. Don’t try to chase the “perfect” setting because it won’t be perfect the next time due to material differences in production lots or even things like humidity.
- Change 1 factor at a time when you’re testing - you cannot reliably determine the impact of changes to multiple factors at the same time.
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