Scoring 1/16 acrylic from Johnson’s Plastics Plus

[mrtoad]

Has anybody scored 1/16” acrylic from JPP? We purchased some and want to make some earrings. The designs we want to use have very thin lines and when we try engraving it barely shows as they are so thin. I want to see if engraving would be better. Thanks!

EDIT: I mean I want to see if scoring would be better.

[hansepe]

You really just need to test. It may give you what you want, it might not.

Keep in mind that scoring is really just a cut with faster speed and lower power. With 1/16 material it would be real easy to cut thru while scoring depending on your settings. The width of the score is going to be really narrow unless you defocus the beam.

[brokendrum]

@mrtoad

make some earrings

I usually use 2 color 1/16 acrylic for earrings, (exception is 1/8 with a heavy score for the depth look).
I have some ballpark parameters I have saved as custom 2 color. They will get you near a happy place but you still need to test each of the different colors and brands.
The numbers are good for two-color or single.
Reds. Teals, Black seem to need a heavy hit. Tests like that…

Inventables 2 Color Acrylic Settings

Yes and no. The plastic masking comes off all the materials. I use paper masking on leather, wood and plastics. As a rule I try to engrave/score/cut vector designs without masking on the two color. Only once have I got discoloration//char from doing it this way. It was a marble looking two color and for some reason it wanted to flare and flame (suspect something in the materials to make it look like marble). If there is a raster element, they tend to sweep over the entire design and this can…

Also have some defocus testing you can examine Just slow down a bit or hit a little harder for defocus, since you are not getting the meat of the beam.

Fun With De-Focused Score - time saver experiment

I decided to take some time and experiment with the de-focus score (thickness adjustment) concept. I chose this butterfly design specifically because it took a lot of fiddling to get it to work in a 3 step process. Engrave body, engrave wing, cut design. I was working with it as nodes primarily. Maybe a better way to do it, but it was what I used to finally get it to laser in 3 steps the way I wanted it to. First part of the experiment worked well, in that it took me just a few minutes to mak…

[mrtoad]

Thank you both for the replies. I looked at both links. I will try those settings tomorrow for the first link. I don’t quite understand on the defocus. Am I just selecting “unknown material” (I think that is what the selection is when it is not proofgrade, I’m not in front of my computer) and put in the thickness numbers you mentioned instead of doing a set focus? Thank you again.

[brokendrum]

@mrtoad

put in the thickness numbers you mentioned instead of doing a set focus

Yes. Normal thickness is 0.060, so the defocus of say 0.2 would be well above the material. May even want to do multiples of thickness, say start at 0.12, until line is thick enough for the job.
For the rest, like cut etc, you would use the actual thickness or autofocus. I generally put the correct thickness in but whatever is your normal style.
Bit of an exaggeration but maybe this image will help.

[mrtoad]

Thank you. I will try this tomorrow. I appreciate the help!

[brokendrum]

@mrtoad

try this tomorrow

Almost forgot.
You can use defocus and actual thickness within the same design. The machine will just hesitate for a few seconds when it swaps the parameters as it goes down the element list…

[mrtoad]

That is awesome, it will save me from having to keep restarting the jobs. How do I do that though?

[brokendrum]

@mrtoad

How do I do that though

Take each element on the left and decide what you want to do with it.
Here is one design I did that used a standard engrave and a defocus score for a fast thick line.
So thickness went from a 0.05 for snowman engrave and a 0.2 for the snowflake fast line score.

[mrtoad]

Thank you! Will be trying later today.