I am wondering… somewhere I read or heard that if the laser power/speed is balanced correctly that when you vector cut wood you should not get a charred or dark brown edge as the wood is actually vaporized rather than burnt. This makes sense to me, but the demo I went to - the edges were burnt. And of course smelt burnt. How do you get rid of the odor and how do you minimize the brown? One sample sent me by a company ahd beautiful edges, only slightly deep in color than the face of the wood (a light wood).
I am still fairly new to the laser business however one thing I am sure of – there is a lot of ‘fiddling’ to get exactly what you want. Wood is a great example. A lot depends on the type of wood, light – dark-dense-soft-grain-etc. Then there are dependencies for your exhaust fan and the blower being used to stop the wood from flaring.
I was really surprised how much of laser engraving is trial and error and getting dialed into a good information sharing ground like this one. You can make beautiful things just be prepared for a certain amount of ruined product.
Also keep lots of notes. I use a spreadsheet to track type of wood, speed, power, frequency, results, etc.
I HATE WOOD!
From my experience, wood is more of a function of the kind of the wood you’re using. Some woods darken right up where others don’t. Air assist is a MUST. The only wood I had good luck with was balsa. Plywood did very bad.
You need power, like 250 watts+ and inert gasses to get the cleanest cuts in wood. A lot of the discolouration is the resins and that you can’t do much about. The ppi is important, IE how many pulses the laser fires per second, when cutting. Low power lasers won’t generally cut anything but the “driest” and thinnest woods well.
I know about plywood– I took a piece to the demo (a couple pieces actually) thin stock, right through. Thicker — the glue stopped the beam. There is laser compatible ply available and I got a scrap of it to try on my next foray.