I’ve been having an issue now for a while cutting 1/16" cast acrylic on a 105w Boss. I can’t seem to get cuts that come out clean; they almost always end up with a sticky residue around the edges. I’ve messed around a lot with cut speed, power, and number of passes but I either end up with sticky edges or incomplete cuts. Maybe there’s no way around this issue, but I’m hoping to find a better solution, as many of the labels I’m making are tiny, bulk tags that would be far too time consuming to individually clean. I normally wipe everything down with isopropyl straight off the laser bed. What angle should I be taking to tackle this, should I try something different with the cut settings or maybe try a different way of cleaning everything?
Try elevating the acrylic off the honeycomb bed/slat bed, and increase the amount of air movement.
That residue is vaporized acrylic condensing on the surface of the material after cutting - if you remove the vapor, you can eliminate the issue. If your sheets are really cold as well, that would cause condensate to occur more.
There are many videos that discuss the problems and causes of acrylic cuts.
I’ll just leave one of the many helpful videos here, which, while not explicitly mentioning the sticky problem, helps to identify it. @Colin’s suggestion was the first one I would take into consideration.
I don’t think the sheets are particularly cold, the laser isn’t in a climate controlled environment. I think I have the air assist turned up about as high as it can go without cycling the air compressor too much, but maybe I’ll try and tweak it a bit and run the fume extractor at a higher speed.
I’ve cut/engraved a lot of acrylic. It either vaporizes and condenses on the material or sticks elsewhere, such as your table, machine or ventilation system. After the job, it cools down and is either a powder type residual or it’s solid.
What I’m trying to figure out, what is sticky, nothing any acrylic that I used left anything that felt sticky.
I’ve cut 10mm acrylic with my 43W, and do 3mm a lot. For about 1.5mm acrylic, seems awfully thin. I can’t image using a piece of powerful artillery to cut this.
I was advised by people who know, that I should run minimum pressure. I only run enough pressure to keep the lens free of debris. If the air assist strikes the acrylic I have issues. Other have found otherwise. Might give it a try.
Using my machine, I have to physically reduce the airflow when using acrylic.
