Is there any way to cut very thin (.008”) clear plastic. This is for HO scale model railroad buildings and the windows are often quite small, sometimes less than 1/4” square and require accurate clean cuts. I don’t know what kind of plastic it is.
I tried sandwiching the plastic between paper and an MDF backing and it just melted it.
Any suggestions would be gratefully accepted.
Clear materials will be tricky because the blue light will pass through it without being absorbed.
What kind of plastic is it?
Polyethylene is fairly clean-burning but will shrink when heated.
Vinyl of any kind will release Chlorine gas and combine with water vapour to make HCL.
As @JohnJohn points out, a diode laser is the wrong hammer for clear plastic, because very little of the energy gets absorbed.
I assume you want to cut out the window pane to install in a sash.
I recently had great success making perfectly rectangular holes in paper with a CO₂ laser by “engraving” them hard enough to vaporize the paper, rather than trying to “cut” them:
Perhaps “engraving” a small rectangular border around the window pane, with a very thin paper overlay to absorb the energy and transfer it to the plastic, will do something either useful or interesting.
I have no idea what kind of plastic it is. It comes with the structure kits, but no telling what it is.
It might be easier to just design the panes in Lighburn and etch them onto paper to use as a template to manually cut them out.
Thanks for your input.
Maybe you can use Perforation mode.