Any of you out there consistently cut half-inch acrylic? I did it once by trial and error and because my settings were wrong, I actually damaged my edges a little bit. I only have one piece to get one shot at this.
I have access to a shared machine, which is 100 W. We have a 4 inch cutting head In which I don’t have that much experience with.
Can you guys give me some power settings and speed settings as well as distance from the head to the material if you have experience in this half end acrylic? I just don’t wanna have to end up making like 12 passes on this thing. I am making a throat plate for a tablesaw and I thought I would try acrylic this time around.
I used to cut it on our 40w Full Spectrum all the time, 2 passes of 6mm/s, 90% power.
100w should be able to punch through at 60% or so power depending on the machine. Focal length of your lens would affect speed and quality of the cut, but I would start out at 10mm/s single pass. Do a couple small lines into the edge of some scrap, and you will see how much penetration you are getting at each speed (if this is not a case of being charged for laser by the minute or having them run your files)
I also have a 40W machine and have cut 10mm at about 5mm/s@100% drawing 20mA. I used a 4" lens focused at the middle of the material.
A 4" lens is too short for 12.5mm, it’s depth of focus is just over 10mm.
If you have only 1 piece that’s got to be right, I don’t know what to tell you. Even if all us had equivalent machines it’s unlikely that the settings would be the same.
