Please help, I’m getting so discouraged 
I purchased 1/8" white and black acrylic on Amazon, but I cannot get it to cut on my Aura machine. Does anyone have any suggestions for the cut settings? I understand they want us to use Prograde material, but you see people on Etsy selling glitter acrylic items or pastel acrylic items; how do they cut those?
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The Aura will not cut white acrylic. It’s a 6 watt diode laser and no 6 watt diode laser can cut white acrylic, it’s just not physically possible due to the wavelength of that type of laser. The Aura should be able to cut black acrylic, although it does require 3 passes and slow speed/ high power, so even with black it’s operating at the limits of its capability.
In order to cut white, pale, or clear acrylic you would need a different type of laser, like the CO2 lasers of the Glowforge Performance series.
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More likely with a CO2 laser, not a diode like Aura. But the good news is that Aura does a great job cutting thin medium-darker colors.
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Wow, this is disappointing! I did my due diligence in researching the AURA and it doesn’t specify anywhere on the site that you can only use specific colors of acrylic. I literally got this machine just to cut mirrored acrylic
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Sorry it’s disappointing. The info is out there, but doesn’t call out cutting mirrored acrylic, but since mirrored acrylic is clear acrylic with a thin layer of mirror film I think this applies:
Glowforge Aura uses a blue, 6-watt, solid-state laser, so it is not compatible with glass, clear acrylic, white acrylic, blue acrylic, vinyl, or Draftboard®️ materials.
From this page:
That being said you can often buy mirrored acrylic in all kinds of precut shapes, and I bet you can engrave the mirror layer off the back of acrylic mirror with an aura. I haven’t tried it but it seems like it should work.
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You can make your own “mirrored” acrylic using this spray paint:
Krylon K01010A07 Premium Metallic Spray Paint Resembles Actual Plating, Original Chrome, 8 oz
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you’re a genius
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hi, mirrored acrylic in precut shapes? I’ll look into it
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But what about the white acrylic that comes as proofgrade?
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It’s proofgrade…but will only work in the performance series machines…not the Aura. Welcome to the community.
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For an Aura you want to focus here: Aura Compatible Proofgrade® – Glowforge Shop
If you’re in the base store you want to click Aura and Performance Compatible before purchasing for an Aura:
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Will I run into this problem with engraving or scoring onto clear or white or non dark colors as well?
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Ok so now i have questions about wood. does the colors matter too? or is it just the thickness
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As far as I know there are no problems with wood…but unless you take time to test, if the wood you want to use isn’t in the drop down menu yet, settings will be an issue because they’re quite different than for one of the performance series machines.
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Yes.
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Thought I would make a caveat to this. You can engrave on clear or white acrylic if you put a black cardstock on the crumb tray before engraving. It’s a hack I found and have used.
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No kidding? I will have to give that a try—thanks!
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Have you also tried cutting using that hack?
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No but I could see that it scored pretty deeply so I think it could work.
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I experimented with clear acrylic and black layers and stuff like that, and I had really bad results. I’d be interested in seeing your pictures.
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