I am looking to cut a shape out of a “panel” made of basically #2 pencils. I will not be cutting through the metal bands or rubber erasers. I am not sure on the graphite (“lead”) on the inside of the pencil. Anybody see any issues with pencil graphite? Could not really infer anything from the list of laserable materials. Thanks in advance…
Keep in mind that graphite is conductive. I don’t think that a CO2 laser would be particularly good at cutting graphite. You would typically want to use a fiber laser for that. Most conductive/metallic substrates do better with a fiber laser. What is likely to happen here is that the wood will cut but the graphite rod will heat and perhaps set the wood on fire.
If you have a combination organic/conductive object to cut with a laser there are very expensive multi-wavelength lasers that are designed to cut composite type materials.