Settings on lasering and cutting engineered wood

Community Laser Talk
1

Engineered wood, man made, plastic wood
Anyone have experience Engraving this with co2 laser?
Can 1/2 pieces be cut as well??

2

Be careful what you cut/engrave ā€¦

This is a pdf, remove the .txt

NEVER-CUT-THESE-MATERIALS.pdf.txt (115.7 KB)

Have fun :+1:

:smile_cat:

3

I can open it cant change ext. Email it to me so i can

Craigkeller65@gmail.com

4

I believe it is a link to this:

5

If itā€™s the kind Iā€™m thinking of thatā€™s basically sawdust mixed with plastic and moulded into wooden ā€˜planksā€™, then basically youā€™ll want to know what the composite is made from, whether the wood is fresh or recycled, if recycled do they have a way of ensuring chemically treated wood is not used? As many are extremely toxic.

Also if the wood species used is safe for burning. I live in a country that grows a beautiful lacewood (silky oak) that, when freshly cut, is so full of Hydrogen Cyanide that breathing the sawdust it can cause serious health issues. Oh Australiaā€¦ :laughing:

Likewise, what plastic is used? If HDPE as common down here in Australia, it will cut on a laser, and produces ā€˜safeā€™ fumes, but produces a gooey, stringy, ugly cut, and thereā€™s no real way around it, it also likes to catch fire. Other plastics can be toxic or likewise poorly suited to laser-cutting.

If itā€™s another kind of man-made wood (e.g. strandboard, plywood, MDF, laminates, etc), youā€™ll need to factor the above and the adhesive used. Most adhesives used for manufacturing these products are urea-formaldehyde which produces nasty dangerous fumes when cut, and also makes for horrible burns that block the laser from penetrating deeply/through a material, and causes severely charred edges.

Melamine is the usual industrial adhesive suitable for laser cutting.

Have you explored CNC routing for your goals? May be better suited and make the risks easier to mange. Weā€™re working on CNC-design and control software that will be akin to LightBurn.

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6

What everyone is trying to tell you is that you cannot just grab up just anything and throw it in the laser. This is why you will see ā€œLaser Safeā€ in some advertisements.

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