If price is your issue, you are pretty well stuck with 'mechanical cutting', saw or router. Cutting with water or laser are probably your two best high-tech choices, but neither come cheap.
For the cost difference, you can put in a 'cheap method of cutting' with a 'killer' dust collection system. I haven't tried it but in addition to 'sucking up the dust', you could add some 'dust curtains' around the area of the cutting tool, and a 'blowing air supply' to try to additionally send the dust toward the 'dust collector'. But there will always be some that gets out.
Even with lasers, it is not a 'enviromental friendly' thing to do cutting MDF. At least the Epilog require an external 'dryer vent' to vent combustion gasses for WHEN the wood burns away, the exhaust gasses go 'outside' rather than 'smoke up' the building.
The guy with info on the Kern laser above, probably knows something I don't about
no exhaust gasses, but that could also have to do with the material being cut. The Kern is a MUCH larger format than the Epilog I was looking into.  |