Maker Foundry Settings — Understanding a Setting

• What do Cut, Engrave, and Score mean?

  Cut — a vector line that goes all the way through the material. Engrave — burning a surface mark, either filled art/text (raster/bitmap) or a light vector line. Score — a light vector line that marks the surface without cutting through (great for fold lines or outlines). Cut and Score are vecto...

• What do Power, Speed, and the other numbers mean?

  On each setting page you will see: Power — laser power, as a percentage of the machine's max. Speed — how fast the head moves (usually mm/s; some machines use mm/min). LPC / DPI / Line Interval — engraving resolution. Line interval is the gap between scan lines (smaller = finer/darker); DPI/LPI ...

• What do the source labels (Supplier reference, Community, Maker Foundry) mean?

  Each setting shows where it came from so you know how much to trust it as-is: Supplier reference / Official — from a manufacturer or supplier's own library. Great context, but still test on your machine. Maker Foundry — shared or derived by us as a starting point. Community report — shared by an...

• What is the "More [material] settings" panel?

  On a setting page, this panel links together every setting for the same material on the same machine: The Engrave setting is shown once (engraving does not change with thickness). Cut settings are listed by thickness (3mm, 6mm, 10mm…), so you can jump straight to the thickness you have. Score ap...

• Why does it say to test on scrap first?

  Because no two setups are identical. Tube age and wattage drift, lens and focus, air assist, material batch, ambient temperature, and mirror alignment all shift results. A setting from the library is a starting point, not a guarantee. Run the setting on a scrap piece of the same material, check t...