If you search for “Baltic settings” you will be overwhelmed. The forum’s search is not always great but that one will work.
Up to and including this post that I myself wrote, the third result.
We write these posts so you don’t have to ask 
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The problem was trying to find the content and knowing search keywords to search for, lol.
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I find this to be the biggest thing anytime I get into something totally new to me. The info is out there but I don’t know what insiders call things. Google is great but even with all of its AI it has its limits. Anyway, that is what we are all here for. I’m considered an old hat around here and still have to ask about things once in a while.
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Here is a document with many helpful things in one place: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sWOebDU94HwezYPbHa3YdtXjpLbEl_vEPvCb1dSByL4/edit#gid=2079951607
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Discourse search is also notoriously bad in comparison to other platforms that most people are familiar with: Google.
This doesn’t contain settings but it contains good info for those who wonder what they can or cannot put into their laser:
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I search here, but when I can’t find anything, I try to make an educated guess about what the material will behave like and use those settings as a starting point. I view a laser as a maker tool, more than a crafting tool. Part of the fun of being a maker is stepping out into the unknown. Is it nervewracking? Sometimes!
Yes, PG materials are pricey. They are also pre-finished, safe, cut to the right size, and reasonably consistent. You pay for the easy factor. I typically use non-PG materials, in part due to cost, in part because I don’t always want a slick, glossy finish.
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Make magazine has had a bit of trouble, went broke. This was a flame test that can be found elsewhere but I’m paranoid enough to say don’t cut plastics that you don’t know for sure what it is. You can ruin a 
with just one cutting of a chlorinated plastic!
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Sorry, I didn’t go through the site myself. I just thought it may be helpful to new gloforge owners.
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Here:
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You certainly have identified an issue that is very important. I feel your frustration. It is hard to sift through all this information and figure out what to focus on.
Marketing from Glowforge makes it look easy. It is easy. They have an ecosystem of design and materials and workflow that just works (of course aside from malfunctioning machines). It is an excellent business model and I hope it is successful. It seems to be doing ok, but it’s hard to tell overall.
But there is the rest of the story that marketing won’t give you. Welcome to reality. Lasers are noisy, smelly, smokey, finicky, delicate, and complicated systems. Step outside the Glowforge workflow and you will have some work to do.
Venting is a big issue. They are finally getting to a point that they are making good on initial promises of a filter. But it is totally different from what was first imagined and it will always remain one of the downsides of having a laser. People just have to deal with a venting setup or pay for filters. Some people cancelled their orders because they couldn’t solve the venting issue.
The trace function makes it seem like anyone can just throw something in the bed and they can engrave and cut perfectly. It is a great marketing asset. It works well for its limitations but it will never substitute for digital literacy. To get your money’s worth out of the Glowforge, you will have to learn a vector design program and at least rudimentary bitmap editing skills. That’s the reality unless you are willing to pay for designs. And paying for designs will never get you the product you really want to make in the material you really want to use.
The Glowforge was designed so that it wouldn’t require a separate chiller. That is a game changer. Seems great, until you realize that this requires an operating environment that is going to challenge some people, too hot or too cold. Some people cancelled because they wouldn’t have a shop to fit into the temp profile.
Proofgrade is amazing. I love it. When I need to make something fast, I use it. I can’t for the life of me get a finish for wood objects that they have. But there are so many things that I want to make that Proofgrade would never be able to fulfill. Meaning, lots of thick acrylic, edge lit signs. I have a cheap source of it and I can use it like cardboard. Never would be able to do that with Proofgrade. Being tied to Proofgrade can be a big problem though. Supply doesn’t always keep up with demand. Some folks are stuck because of this.
In the end, all of us has to do a lot of homework to get the most out of our machines. Some of us had the benefit of getting in during the long winter before production machines came out. But there are many veteran forum members who started out with little or no knowledge and this was before the forum had thousands of posts detailing everything one could think of. I spent a lot of time combing through laser sites and YouTube videos to learn enough to ask questions on this forum. We were lucky that from the outset there were some folks who had experience. For example, I read through every one of @m_raynsford’s blog posts. I watched every one of SabarMultimedia’s videos. And I spent hours and hours fiddling with a pre-release and having hardly anything to show for it because everything I wanted to do required testing and redesigning and muddling my way through it.
It is hard to figure out where to start. The best way is to make a circle and a square vector. Copy them. Fill the copies. Make each one a different color. Now you have four things you can test. For cutting Start with fast speed and low power. See what happens. For engraving start with lower LPI and a fast speed (1000) and lower power (10). See what happens. Rinse and repeat. I do that still with materials I am trying out. I don’t make charts or complicated test patterns. Just this.
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I’m sure other’s have already said it, but we’ve started off with the same worries you’re having. I promise with some practice you won’t feel so lost. Even after a few years at this I still need to run a few tests when using a new material and burning some scrap is just expected. I usually start with the PG wood I think is the closest and go from there. I base it off of hardness and have found this scale helpful. Of course, searching here or asking also will get you good results.
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“ material name’ settings” usually works for me. For example “slate settings”.
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It won’t take long for you to develop a “feel” for different materials, but I had the opposite reaction when I wandered in here knowing nothing. Testing the different materials was like a treasure hunt to me, and I got great joy out of that journey. 
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I tried your suggestion and it works!
You suggested I get to know a vector and raster software. I have more than 18 years with vector and raster imaging.
Here is some of my work: https://coldwhitefire.artstation.com/
Here are my settings and an after product.
I don’t understand the colors between black and royal blue.
I have seen in some other posts there was a palette that had deeper cuts and the order of operations for each color, but not sure what they did. I also had seen in other posts where someone had different colors and depth of cut made a charcoal burn, and I’m not ready for starting fires.
I wish there was a screencast section where we could show our processes with screencasting and videos with the GF to show the steps of operation.
Thanks again for the suggestions.
Christopher
I was trying to use this to horse png to engrave with and wasn’t having any success as I would put in the settings and the laser wouldn’t engrave anything. I couldn’t even see it burning anything like it had with the circles.
Does the color matter when it comes to the filled circles? As I see the 1000/10 is lighter than the 1000/20 filled circle. Color meaning black or blue?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t. My wording was ambiguous for sure. I was generalizing with a few examples of folks who have gotten trapped by what looks like an easy process when in fact to get the most out of the Glowforge, one needs to develop many different skills. Many people arrive here and don’t know the difference between a vector and a raster.
In your case, you are struggling with understanding how the Glowforge translates a design into different operations. Color has nothing to do with the power or speed or LPI of the operation. Only that a different color comes in as a different operation. And the order of the colors from hex 000000 to FFFFFF determines the order that they appear in the operations panel.
You have two filled vector shapes that are different colors and that means two engraving operations.
You have two outlined vector shapes that have different colors and that means two cut/score operations.
One you have an operation, you have to set the power, speed and lpi for an engrave (assume autofocus) and power and speed for a cut/score.
Raster/bitmaps are a different issue since we are dealing with gradients and the Glowforge can deal with that in different ways, from varying power to the dithering pattern. I’m not the expert on engraving things like that horse, but it should come in great. I generally do pure vector designs with a rare png thrown in.
The 1000 is the speed. Faster means less dwelling on a spot means less laser burninating. the 10 or the 20 is the power of the laser. More power, higher number, more burninating.
That’s for raster engraving
For vector cuts, it only goes to 500 speed and 1 to max power. 500 speed and 1 power is as light as you can go for cutting/scoring a vector/ 120/full power will cut through thick acrylic. 250/60 will cut cardboard ok. Always watch it like a hawk.
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Although to complicate things, a closed vector can also be engraved 
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Must remember to say “defaults to a cut” [but you can change it to an engrave]. Never sure when to spoon feed or fire hose it.
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