Is this material permitted on the laser cutter? It is flame-retardant and self-extinguishing. Basically a fiberglass mat with epoxy fill. From what I can see the epoxy does not emit chlorine. It does emit bromine which is the self-extinguishing agent.
Thanks
Kevin Grantham
First issue is the copper will need to be removed. Our lasers are unlikely to ablate the copper, even as thin as it is.
Second is that the burnt edge glass filled epoxy will usually be ‘fuzzy’ with glass fibers. This can be manually cleaned up with sandpaper. The dust is hazardous though.
If all you need are straight cuts a shear is best. If not, a CNC router is a better choice BUT ours do not have the dust collection required for safe removal of glass fiber dust.
Seconded on the copper. Trying to etch metal on these lasers can cause reflections which can cause issues. We do not have the lenses/laser type that supports this well.
Also, if I recall correctly, bromine is quite nasty - depending on the amount being released, I would be a little concerned about this
The final decision is up to laser of course. Expected products may include more HBr (acid vapor) and some bromine gas. The amount of bromine in FR4 varies but can be up to 15-20% of the total weight compared with about ~60% of the total weight being chlorine in PVC (most people don’t realize that PVC is mostly chlorine by weight). Chlorine gas is also more reactive and more dangerous than bromine.
Are you trying to cut an existing board that has already has metal traces or are you trying to cut material so that you can make your own circuit board?
Back in school we threw some single sided copper clad fr4 into our CO2 laser (60W ULS, similar to the fusion) just to see what would happen, copper side down. It took us 2-3 passes to get through the fiberglass, and no amount of cutting would touch the copper.
My experience was that the burnt edge was so severe we couldn’t reasonably clean it up with sandpaper. It extended about 1/16" back from the cut and the part wouldn’t have been useful. As for the copper, it was kinda cool to see the laser more or less destroy the fiberglass and be stopped by ~0.001" of copper foil… But again, not very useful.