hi all! I’ve hit many snags trying to print a simple word on acrylic. it cuts the amazon wood just fine with one pass. on acrylic I bought the amazon 1/8in or 3mm variety and have tried using the green acrylic settings and using custom settings with 3mm or 4mm and a variety of speeds and passes. it wont cut through the acrylic, or make a series of passes that are not overlapping but nearly overlapping. the machine is brand new this month so it’s ‘user error’ for sure. thoughts? what settings do you use on amazon acrylic? how many passes? do you use actual 3mm or other? I will pay someone to zoom tutor me!
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You didn’t provide quite enough info to be sure what’s going on, so here’s some general advice:
If you have an Aura or Spark there are some colors of acrylic that you cannot cut. Check out #5a for more info here:
If you have a performance model, then you might like to look at #6, it has suggested settings for all kinds of materials.
In general, 3mm acrylic is equivalent to proofgrade medium acrylic. If all else fails or if you can’t figure out a good testing method (like the one in #6), that’s a good place to start. Make a small test cut if you’re testing, no sense in wasting lots of materials on a maybe.
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-What machine are you using? Note: If you using an Aura or a Spark, you cannot cut all of the same materials that you can with the Glowforge Plus or Pro. With acrylic, you can’t cut every color.
-Any time you are using a new material, do a small test cut before attempting to cut any designs. I like to do a star so i can fully test out the corners etc and make sure everything is working properly.
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You do also need to be skeptical of Amazon acrylic. I bought some once, labeled as cast acrylic, and it certainly was not as advertised. It may have been extruded acrylic, which behaves differently in the laser than cast acrylic, or it may have been something else entirely. All Glowforge Proofgrade acrylic is cast. There are many other reputable dealers you can get cast acrylic from. A random Amazon supplier is not necessarily sufficiently reputable.
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At least it doesn’t sound like polycarbonate which will cut…but go quickly straight to melty and burned.
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I think what I got from Amazon may well have been polycarbonate. It was awful.
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