I’d like to laser cut 1/2" to 3/4" thick wood - either plywood or a 1x4. The wiki says the laser can cut materials up to 0.75" thick. Alyssa’s presentation on the wiki says 0.25" thick (although that specifically mentions acrylic).
I’m seeking any tips anyone might have about cutting this wood.
Oh and BTW, the reason I don’t want to use the scroll saw is that I need to make something that is perfectly symmetrical and I doubt if I can hand cut that symmetry.
Thanks much, Chris
Is this something that could be possibly done on the CNC router? The biggest physical limitation would be the width of the bit causing rounded off corners etc.
John,
I’ve had a lot of luck recently cutting .75in. thick solid wood. The trick I’ve found is the type of wood you cut. The denser the wood the harder it is to cut. I’ve found poplar is really good to cut. I’ve cut .5 in. oak but .75 is troublesome. Maple cuts pretty well in those thicknesses as well. For our laser, a 90w Full spectrum with pretty clean optics 20% speed, 100% power and 2 passes works great on the poplar, and that’s using the 1.5 in. optics. You do have to watch out for the kerf with thicker materials, especially if you’re making parts that fit together.
I much prefer to cut solid materials instead of plywood. The laser cuts better through consistently dense material. Plywood has multiple layers glued together. The more layers, the more glue between those layers, and that’s the big problem with ply. I’ve run multiple passes over ply trying to get through it, and just end up burning out the inner wood layers trying to get through all the glue. And unless you have really nice ply with solid layers (no knots, fillers or voids) you’ll always get bad areas that don’t cut consistently. Even with solid wood, you’ll get a knot or dense area of grain that will vary the cut effectiveness. That’s why I’m liking poplar, it’s fairly dimensionally stable and has nice grain.
Hope this helps,
patrick
The rounded off corners wouldn’t particularly be an issue for this particular item, but I don’t know how to program for or use the CNC router, so that limits me there. Thanks for the suggestion though.
That helps much. I’m making a fixture for (steam) bending a lamination of 3 layers of 1/32" thick pear wood. After bending the pear wood, the fixture will be discarded so I’m not worried about hard woods … I was thinking fir, poplar, or similar or possibly baltic birch ply.
I had planned to compensate for X-Y axis kerf, but I had forgotten that recently the laser was either not cutting vertically (either X or Y dimension) or had a substantial tapered kerf. Have you seen that problem recently?
Also, is the 1.5" optic the one that’s usually on there, or is the 2" one usually on there?
Thanks,
Chris
If you want perfect symmetry, you probably won’t get what you want with the laser cutter, because it has a V shaped kerf.
The way to get perfect symmetry is to cut a jig with the scroll saw, and then use that with a flush cut bearing bit on the router table. When you flip the template over to the other side, you will have perfect symmetry.