I’ve been reading for 2 days and just don’t get it. I bought purebond birch plywood 5/32 from HD. Do I choose unknown or choose a GF wood setting? I’ve seen both options. I chose light bassword with GF and set to 175/full. Then chose unknown with same settings. Both seemed to do the same with my test. I have a pretty good size svg that I want to cut and would like to make sure I’m not going to do any harm to the machine if it runs like this for 20 minutes. Is there no simple way to just put the wood in seeing as it is laser supported and make a project? I bought 5/32 purebond walnut maples & 5/32 purebond birch plywood & 1/4 mahogny purebond plywood. Can someone please tell me there is a chart out there somewhere. I have searched and searched and can’t find for the wood I’m using. Please help, I’m so frustrated…
OK good news, you’re not doing anything dangerous for your machine. That’s the most important part.
Second piece of good news: You can save settings to reuse. You can enter a custom setting and then save and name it how you like. Something like “5/32 purebond plywood” would do the trick, just remember that it’ll be alphabetized once you save it. Numbers come first, so it’d be at the top of the list.
As for working with manual settings, also good news, there’s a support page for that!
I think this should get you going.
In terms of how to know which manual settings to use, that’s a bit of an experience thing. The problem is that plywood can vary, and getting a sense of what settings to use is a bit of trial and error and “feel”. However, even with that in mind, this is sort of a good news thing too, there’s a really easy way to test settings on new materials – check out #6 here:
All of this is a lot of info. As you try all of it out let us know if you have any specific questions, I’m sure we can help you get it sorted.
You can either choose “Uncertified” or select one of the Proofgrade settings for a similar product.
In one of the threads you have posted in a user stated that they use Proofgrade maple ply as a starting point and adjust as needed.
If you have worked through the tutorials, you will be on your way to learning how the machine operates. Here is another thread that is very helpful. Common problems/questions
As for putting the wood in and making a project as you suggest, that is the point of Proofgrade material in that you put it in and the Glowforge self populates the settings. Wood and wood products are quite variable and Proofgrade takes the guess work out. Buying HD wood is perfectly acceptable, but you are going to have to find the settings that give you the desired affect for engraves and which cut through cleanly. You may also want to mask the HD wood to avoid flashback char.
For the 5/32" wood, select “medium maple plywood” and use the pre-selected settings. It’s close enough in thickness, and the PureBond is less dense than Proofgrade so it’s definitely going to cut through using that setting.
For the 1/4" thick wood, choosing “thick walnut plywood” is probably the closest thing. I haven’t tried their mahogany veneer, but I know those settings are more than enough for their maple or walnut in the same thickness.
I use the settings for medium maple ply with the 5/32”. There’s no official settings for anything other than Proofgrade materials, so you’ll get used to selecting the closest equivalent then testing to hone in on the optimal settings.
Good luck!
Ditto to everything they’ve already said, and also
This is what can happen when you buy Proofgrade directly from 
. Early on I kept the stickers so that when I had another piece of material that either I’d cut through the sticker, or it’s not actually PG it would still auto-read. Fairly quickly I moved off PG stuff, but continued using the stickers for a bit…eventually moving to either my saved settings, or the PG ones for everything 
Same settings are same settings so will behave the same
Picking a material from the list just prepopulates settings for you that are designed by GF to work for their Proofgrade materials.
Worry less about that for now and follow the great advice you’ve already received above and it will become clear as you work through the tutorials.
Once you’re comfortable - you can always start with a GF setting close to your non Proofgrade materials and tweak from there.