Scoring 1/16 acrylic from Johnson’s Plastics Plus

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.

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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.

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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…

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.

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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.

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.

image

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

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…

That is awesome, it will save me from having to keep restarting the jobs. 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.

image
image

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Thank you! Will be trying later today.

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