Laser cutting is a method of cutting apart flat sheet goods such as plywood, leather, plastic and fabrics, with a high powered laser. Typically the laser is an enclosed machine that the goods must be brought to rather than bring the laser to the item you're cutting.
Common Types of Hobby Lasers:
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Common Types of Hobby Lasers:
- CO2 Gas Laser: These lasers are some of the most common as they are quite versatile and low-to-mid budget for a laser cutter. Their strength is often measured in watts but in general they usually used for cutting wood, opaque plastics, and engraving but usually not cutting ferrous metals. The CO2 lasers require a large glass chamber that is sometimes water-cooled to allow for higher wattages. Because light is generated in this large gas chamber a series of mirrors are used to direct the beam to the work piece.
- Diode Laser: These are used only for engraving, you often see these sold as add-ons for 3d printers and CNC routers as the laser diode can be mounted directly onto the tool head. This is the same method of creating laser light as you find in a laser pointer but higher wattage and typically generating a light spectrum not entirely visible to humans.
- Fiber lasers: These lasers use CO2 or other gas lasers but combine multiple outputs together for incredible strong beam capable of quickly engraving metals and even cutting. These are often out of the price range for hobbyists and small businesses but are becoming more affordable with time.
- Glow forge ($3,999 - $6,999): a very polished laser marketed to be suitable from the home use. These come in a variety of sizes with some capable of supporting very long work pieces even they can only laser a section at a time. https://glowforge.com/
- OMtech K40 ($479) - This is one the cheapest CO2 lasers available, these are Chinese manufactured lasers imported by the company OMtech for US distribution. They are all 40 watt CO2 lasers but they do come in a variety of sizes to accommodate different work pieces. Some feature a 4th axis for engraving cylinder shaped objets like rolling pins and baseball bats (you probably can't fit a baseball bat in very many of them though). https://omtechlaser.com/
- Creality 3D printer Laser attachment ($59 -$69) - These lasers are very weak but can be attached to a ender 3 3d printer. The the entire laser module is moved around the work piece to burn the image in. There is no enclosure so you are left to find a solution to mitigate smoke and protect your eyes on your own. Be very careful with all lasers but especially ones without an enclosure, some types of light we cannot see but can still blind us. Wear laser specific eye protection. https://creality3d.shop/collections/laser-kit
- Lighburn ($60) - Layout, editing and control software for lasers (not universally compatible) - https://lightburnsoftware.com/
- LaserGRBL (free) - LaserGRBL is a free Windows software for image Laser Engraving. Compatible with lasers with use the GRBL format, it can load images and burn them with little effort. https://lasergrbl.com/
- https://www.ponoko.com/free-laser-cutting-files-templates
- https://3axis.co/laser-cut/
- https://www.dxfdownloads.com/category/free/
- https://laser-templates.com/collections/free-templates
- https://vectorsart.com/
- https://www.troteclaser.com/en/learn-support/laser-projects
If you have any resources and information you would like to share about laser cutting please post it below and we'll add it to this post!
Don't forget to post things you make with the laser cutter!