Laser cutter revisited

[bborncr]

Felix,

Almost two years ago you blogged regarding your experience importing and setting up an inexpensive laser cutter.
What is your opinion of your purchase now? What materials have you cut/engraved. Have you cut wood such as 4mm plywood or MDF?

Regards,

[Felix]

I think it was worth it. It's a very useful tool in many ways. It's just 60W and I wish I went with 90W (just to have spare power if I ever need it) but I am not sure if the size would have been larger for the tube, even the 60W extends beyond the main body of the unit (sticks on the side).

I mainly use it to cut acrylic 1/16" (1.6mm) and 1/8" (3mm) thick.
I don't really cut wood except rarely when I make prototypes - I find 3mm MDF pretty useful for that - I get lots of that when I order stencils.
I also cut cardboard when I prototype a case, which is usually close to 3mm and gives a close resemblance of the 3mm acrylic.
All these materials make a lot of fumes and need very good ventilation. From time to time you can see desktop laser cutters on KickStarter that cut and etch everything you can imagine without a puff of smoke and they have no ventilation (or you can buy the $500 "air filtering" add-on) I just laugh and cry. You really need good ventilation and tip air (these are 2 separate things). If you don't have ventilation you will smoke your house and the thing you cut will catch fire, and tip air keeps smoke away from the mirrors.

I regularly make production stencils from mylar until I optimize the PCB panel sizes and go through revisions and I feel like I have a stable revision of something I make. Then I can order a stainless steel stencil which is much more expensive.

Like every tool it has pros and cons, mostly pros I think. The cons have to do more with the gotchas that you never know it comes with until you start using it. One such huge gotcha is the software which is glitchy.

Would I buy it again? Absolutely. The only thing I'd do different is maybe the 90W upgrade (although now that I think about it that may require a larger chiller). In any case 60W is plenty and you can do most things with 60W without needing more.