So most everyone is well aware of the pain that backside burns or soot etc that comes from the honeycomb table and even the knife edge. I hate them both for cutting small parts out of wood or acrylic as no matter what there is some garbage to clean off.
I know others have come up with a work around but this is mine after fiddling with this off and on.
Simple solution was to build a nail board. This is commonly used in woodworking to paint wood pieces on so you can paint front and back and not wait for one side to dry. But there is a little trick to make it work for cutting.
Now the simple way to make one for me was to make a small circle in LB roughly the diameter of the finish nail. I like long finish nails as I want them to stick way out beyond the board. Anyway now simply create an Array…I use an array of .75 spacing in X and Y. I do 6 rows X and 20 Rows Y as that fits the wood thins I use but this ism up to you.
Then put the nail board in the laser and set it to run say 100 MM/sec and say 60% power roughly and set to fill and fill shapes individually.
This will engrave the nail pattern on the wood and give you a nice start hole. I use 1/2" plywood for the board.
Now I use 3" finish nails and hammer them flush so they stick out the other side and viola a nail board.
The nail tips are very narrow and won’t reflect laser back to the wood…but wait…one trick is you need to spray the nail board surface with light mist of water. Reason is the beam when it pops through will cause the board to flame up or smoke and you will get soot on the back side. Just keep the nail board wood slightly damp and my pieces are virtually clean on the back…no damage from bed reflections…no soot.
Thats my fix…yours may be different
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Thanks for the post Scott. This seems to be a hot topic and I’m seeing many threads about how to improve on honeycomb. Interesting that this is a forum about the software.
So what concerns me about your description is that possibility of flaring up when you burn thru the workpiece. I could see how that happens because there really is no air on the base layer. there is no air flowing up down to take the smoke away due to that lower board, unless it flows across the lower board.