Originally Posted by SkipW  Hi Mike,
I know a 40w will cut 1/16" acrylic without any problem. It would probably cut 1/8" also.
As far as accuracy and repeatability, I think that depends on the machine and the manufacturer. You would have to check the specs if they are available, or try to find someone who has the same machine you are looking at.
One thing with mine (and most all Chinese lasers I think), the laser cuts right on the vector line so if you wanted to cut out say a 3.000" circle it would come out around .010 smaller. You just have to allow for that in the vector drawing, like making the circle size 3.010 to start with.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
Skip |
Thanks for the info Skip.
I know the manufacturers specify a positioning accuracy of usually 0.01mm which is very tight, but I was curious - lets say you cut a 3.010" circle so that you end up with a 3.000" circle. Let's say you measure one and it's dead on 3.000". Then lets say you cut 100 of them... of course there will be some slight variance, but I wonder if it's thousandths of an inch or tens of thousandths?
If the machine can hold 5 or even 10 thousandths, then it would be fine for our application. I need to cut a window for a display - about 3" long and 1.5" high out of 1/16" acrylic. I'm machining the housing so I just don't want one to be really loose and the next one too big to fit, etc
Do you know how close 2 lines can be together before the piece between them melts? For example, lets say you are cutting out a letter "A". You leave a little tab of plastic so that the center of the "A" doesn't fall out. Of course you want that tab to be as small as possible so it doesn't show. How narrow can that tab be before it would be un-cuttable? Could it be 1/32" wide in 1/16" thick acrylic? Or thicker? Thinner?
Part of the cutting I need to do is for a keypad for an electronics device... so there will be cut-outs for buttons and logos and stuff. I don't want to put any of the cuts too close to one another and have the laser guy say "oh I can't cut this" and then have to go back and redesign the part