For class projects, there are a number of concerns to account for for safety reasons and for quality assurance.
Below you will find:
The word laser is actually an acronym. It stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The light emitted by a laser is non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation that is either ultraviolet, visible, or infrared light.
There are many different types of lasers on the market these days, but they all fall within one of these four categories:
Solid State Lasers are used for industrial, medical, and military operations. Gas lasers are often employed in educational, industrial, and medical operations. Semiconductor (Diode) Lasers are the most common lasers today, as they are employed for laser pointers, optical drives (CD's. DVD's, Blu-Ray), laser printers, telecommunications, and the like. Furthermore, many medical lasers are Liquid (Dye) Lasers.
The lasers utilized in most schools are CO2 lasers, therefore, the focus of this page will be on CO2 lasers, a type of gas laser.
CO2 lasers can be used for many different cutting and engraving operations. They can engrave or etch into the surface of more materials than they can cut.
Brick, stone, ceramic, cardboard, paper, cork, fabric, metal, glass, plastics, wood, organic materials (like pumpkins for Halloween), etc.
Cardboard, paper, fabric, leather, plastics, wood, cork, rubber, Corian, etc.
Also, there are materials that should not be lasered. Engraving materials such as PVC (or anything containing vinyl), ABS, HDPE (milk bottle plastic), Styrofoam, epoxy, fiberglass, coated carbon fiber, or Kevlar will result in fire, toxic fumes, and/or corrosive fumes.
The simple way would be to buy materials to be engraved or cut from a company that deals with laserable products. Many of these companies also deal with materials that can be engraved with other types of machines, so be sure what you plan to buy is marked as being laserable. Another course of actions would be to look at Safety Data Sheets (SDS) for a given material. Also, general research online should help you find out if a material would be safe to laser. One thing worth noting, though, is just because someone out there may be laser engraving or cutting a material, that does not necessarily mean it is safe. Do your homework so you do not put yourself, others, or your machine at risk.
You have to know how to set up your file and what type of file format to use so you can end up with the result you desire. Not being clear on how to set up for a cut versus engraving can be very frustrating.
**Please note: At Admiral Byrd, we are running an Epilog Helix machine, so the information below will be specific to Epilog machines, however most machines operate similarly.
File Format: Vector - SVG (or Optimized SVG in Inkscape)
Programs to Run Laser: CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Publisher
Line Width: 0.001-0.004 inches (hairline)
Color Mode: RGB
Considerations: cutting lines that are too close can result in fire, sealed wood is less likely to be affected by smoke and resin, use a wet cloth to remove smoke and resin residue, Epilog has the option to run different color lines at different power and speed levels (so you can vector cut and vector engrave all in the same file)
File Format: Vector or Raster - SVG, PNG, JPG, DXF
Programs to Run Laser: Any program that you can print from if no vectors (cuts) are involved
Line Width: 0.005+ inches @ 400+ DPI; 0.007+ inches at 300 DPI
Color Mode: RGB
Considerations: Epilog will engrave grayscale images... the darker the color, the deeper the deign is engraved. Black will engrave uniformly. Full color does not engrave well. A low quality image will result in a low quality engraving.