Materials for Laser Cutting

Materials #

You must check with a technician if you bring your own materials. Everything we supply is laser-grade and safe.
There are lots and lots of materials that cannot be used safely.

Allowed Materials #

  • cardboard - very fast and cheap, incredibly useful for prototyping, but may well work in final designs
  • paper
  • plywood - we only sell plywood in HatchLabs
  • acrylic
  • other less common materials can be cut/ engraved as detailed by Epilog: laserable/ processable materials

Banned Materials #

  • any material brought into the lab will require a Material Safety Data Sheet to ensure it is safe for Laser Cutting & Engraving as outlined by Epilog: material safety
  • The following list is composed using information from Illinois Tech’s Idea Shop. Please refer to their page for wonderful explanations on why these materials are banned:
    • PVC - releases very toxic Chlorine gas when burnt. Highly poisonous to humans and very corroding to the metal parts of the machine!!
      • This includes vinyl, pleather, artificial leather
    • HDPE/milk bottle plastic
    • PolyStyrene Foam
    • PolyPropylene Foam
    • ABS
    • Epoxy
    • Fiberglass
    • Food- because we use the laser cutter to cut many other materials such as acrylic

Material Settings in Detail #

The Material Settings allow us to correctly cut/ engrave the our materials when the material has bee focused correctly. These are set in the printing preferences in Illustrator.

Vector Setting #

The Vector Settings decide how fast, powerful and frequent we set the laser beam.

  • Speed: How deep the cut will be so for thicker, harder materials we would set the speed to be slower. The slower the speed, the deeper cut.
  • Power: How much laser energy is applied to the material. The higher the power, the deeper the cut.
  • Frequency: How many laser pulses fired per inch of travel. A lower number means less heat, as there are fewer pulses of the laser beam. This is good to avoid wood charring when cut.

Raster Setting #

The Raster Settings decide how deep the engraving will be, how powerful the laser beam is set, which direction to engrave in and dithering options.

  • Speed: How deep the engrave will be. The slower the speed, the deeper (and with wood the darker) the engraving.
  • Power: How much laser energy is applied to the material. The higher the power, the deeper the engraving.
  • Engrave direction: Either top-down or bottom-up.
  • Dithering: Dot patterns on a greyscale image. There are six different dithering techniques to choose from.