Bed for very large fabric laser cutter

[ednisley]

@bernieke

your experience trying to cut fabric with a diode laser vs CO2 laser

None; all I have is a 60 W CO₂ laser.

However, judging from what happened to somebody trying it with a 5 W diode, the whole process is right on the edge of not working:

Inconsistent perforations in fabrics

Hi, I recently got a small starter laser, the Creality Falcon 5w, assembled it, and was able to cut a few things successfully. I use a 24" piece of ceramic tile as a baseboard and operate in an open garage. I’ve found that LightBurn’s perforation function is great for marking seam allowances, and I already cut a couple projects, one on a colorful fabric and one on a solid off-white. [PXL_20240705_181341641.MP] [PXL_20240706_211135547] (That’s a brown thread stitched into the marked perfora…

This comment may save you from a few dead ends:

How to cut fabric?

Something to consider is that using a non-industrial laser to do this (something smaller than a huge gantry 1500 x 3000 or more) is that you will still be cutting the fabric out to fit the bed of your laser. This takes up a lot of material and cuts rather drastically into the time ‘saved’ by the laser. Have you done much sewing of garments on an industrial scale before? There’s a lot that goes into making it an economically-viable enterprise. There’s a reason most of our clothing is made by wh…