Materials (Plastics)
Please be aware that cutting any plastic based material can produce toxic fumes and you should always user your laser in a well ventilated area. There may be significate health risks in cutting cutting some plastics and some materials should not be cut or etched including ABS which emits cyanide gas and PVC which produces hydrochloric acid, vinyl chloride, ethylene dichloride, and dioxin. All of these vapours and fumes are corrosive, toxic, and carcinogenic.
Some of the common plastics you can cut and engrave using a laser are:
- Acrylic
- Fluoropolymers
- Delrin
- Mylar
- Polyimide
- Polyester
- Polystyrene
- Polyurethane
- Polymethylmethacrylate
- PET
Some plastics that cannot be cut using lasers are:
- ABS
- PVC
- Delrin
- Carbon Fiber
- Polycarbonate
- HDPE
- HIPS ( High Impact Polystyrene)
CO2 lasers will cut most materials where is other lasers such as diode are limited due to characteristics of the laser beam. These limitations are due to the way the laser beam interacts with material.
If the material is transparent or lightly tinted the laser will pass through the material without affecting it. Any material that is reflective or mirrored will cause the laser to reflect and again it does not interact with material. It is possible to etch mirrored acrylic by using the laser to cut to the back of the mirror but this doesn't necessarily produce the results required as any impurities within the back can cause a burn mark which is visible in the mirror. I will be doing further tests on this to see what can be done by adjusting the power settings but I would suggest that cutting the mirrors acrylic will be challenging. As most diode lasers are a blue in colour this means that they do not react with materials of similar colours, and this will limit the range of coloured acrylics you can cut.
All of the acrylic samples (3mm) shown below have a 6mm square cut (100% at 600mm/m) with 12 or more cuts. I have only included the colours where the cut was successful, but it is worth noting that the cuts varied in quality as some of the colours over heated the material to produce some visible melting of the plastic. Also some of the plastics showed shrinkage around the cuts. It is therefore important to test the materials you are going to use with different laser speeds, power and the number of cuts required to help identify the best settings when cutting these plastics. All of these tests should be used as a guide and you should always do you own test to make sure you are getting the results your looking for.
The following plain colour acrylics provided the best cut:

These plain colour acrylics showed minor melting around the cuts:

Frosted and Tinted acrylics that could be cut:

I tested cutting clear plastics. PET G (Polyethylene terephthalate glycol) just does not cut which is the same result as clear acrylic.
All these tests were done at a speed of 600mm/m and the test cuts were a 6mm square.