How To Laser Cut Acrylic Sheet

Trotec laser offers an acrylic or metal cutting table option for your laser.

How to laser cut acrylic sheet.

Laser cutting acrylic sheet. Extruded acrylic in. Using your ruler as a guide run a plastic scoring blade along the cutting line trying to make one continuous line with gentle even pressure. Lay your acrylic sheet on a flat work surface and mark the line to be cut.

Place the sheet over hard edge with groove side up. Because of the flexible nature of acrylic sheeting light hand tools like the dremel can be a better option than heavier power tools. To achieve a polished finish on cut acrylic it is best to use cast acrylic not extruded acrylic. You will need to run at high power low speed 4 8mm s and have the air assist on a low level.

Check to see where the blade of your scoring tool will land when you run it against the side of the straight edge. With a straightedge as a guide pull the blade toward you leaving a score mark. The edge of the blade should hit the line exactly. The truth is that the conventional practice for cutting acrylic material involves drills saws and other devices.

Mark the area of sheet you want to cut. You can also cut acrylic with more traditional blade tools such as a jigsaw band saw or table saw. Score the line in the acrylic with a plastic scoring blade. To achieve the best results when cutting extruded acrylic you ll want to elevate the material so that it s not touching the cutting table.

So how do you laser cut acrylic. Use scoring knife to cut a narrow groove in the acrylic sheeting scoring preferably works on sheets less than 6 35mm in thickness. However in this day and age this remains ideal for a company which requires a relatively small output. Score the acrylic several more times along the same line then place the acrylic on the edge of the table and use light quick pressure to snap the piece in two.

When cutting acrylic on a metal cutting bed the laser energy may hit the metal cutting bed and bounce back into the material causing divots or vertical marks along the cut line. This will greatly reduce backside reflection and the occurrence of grid marks on the material after being laser cut. Acrylic sheet can be cut with many different tools but using a dremel with the appropriate attachments can make the process fairly simple. In order to generate heat in the cut consider using a longer focal length lens 2 5 or 4.