Avoid Burnout: Tips for Laser Cutting Thick Materials
Laser Cutting Versatility
One of the great things about laser cutting is its flexibility. A single design can be scaled up or down and cut from different materials allowing for multiple variations. Since laser cutting files are vectors, they’re infinitely scalable without losing quality, making it a go-to technique for creators.
However, when cutting small, detailed designs from thicker materials like wood, challenges can arise. Thicker materials need more laser power and slower speeds, leading to heat buildup. This heat is necessary to cut through wood but can also cause fine details to burn out, leaving the design charred.
By understanding why and when these issues occur (I’ll explain below), you can easily tweak your designs for success.
Join me in January 2025 for The Layered Laser Cut, an in-person workshop where we’ll work together to transform a paper shadow box design into a wooden one—and learn so much more along the way!
The Solution: Scale or Simplify
For example, a design that cuts perfectly from paper may struggle when cut from wood. While paper requires lower power settings, cutting the same 4" x 4" design from wood with higher power can burn away intricate details like delicate leaves.
You have two options to avoid this:
Simplify: Remove smaller details to prevent overburning.
Scale Up: Increase the size of the box to preserve the details.
Which route would you take—keeping the design small but losing some intricacy, or scaling up to keep the details?
Easy Box Design with Box-O-Matic
Designing laser-cut boxes from scratch can be a hassle. Enter Box-O-Matic! This tool lets you input your desired box dimensions, the number of joints, material thickness, and kerf adjustments to create a ready-to-cut box file in minutes.
In the upcoming workshop, I’ll teach you how to adapt your shadow box design for wood, add tabs and slots, and adjust settings for different materials.
The Layered Laser Cut
In-Person Workshop
Dates: January 28 - February 2, 2025
Location: North Country Studio Workshops at Bennington College
Discover the art of laser cutting through layered imagery in this hands-on workshop. You'll gain experience operating a laser cutter, expand your creative possibilities by fine-tuning settings, and learn insider techniques for cutting paper and wood. You'll design three personalized projects using Inkscape: play with color in a layered paper design, craft a three-dimensional hand-colored shadow box, and transform your paper shadow box into a wooden box.
Register: ncsw.org/laser-cutting