Laser

[Claude Hopper]

If you cut plywood with a laser will it catch on fire?

[The Daring Dufas]

Not if it's metallic plywood.

TDD

[Steve Barker DLT]

Not if you do it under water. Makes a supurb cut.

s

[IGot2P]

I cut 3/8 and thinner plywood all the time with a 40 watt laser without any problems. Just keep an air stream on it to keep it from flaming up and also make sure that you exhaust the smoke/fumes.

OTOH, I have no idea what type of laser equipment you are trying to cut it with so YMMV.

Don

[Phil Again]

Go to YouTube and search for: Cutting a dragon pattern and from the hits, select Dragon Video.

link:

As you watch, note the smoke from the cutting kerf. The walls of the kerf become scorched. At Arts-and-Crafts shows, CNC laser machine made items can be identified with this tel-tale scorching. Items made on a scroll-saw with a craftsman freehand guiding the wood past a blade will normally not have this scorched kerf.

There are other YouTube videos that demonstrate the fast, high repeatability, and precision of a CNC laser cutter for wood. The artistry is in the pattern design, not in the execution of the cutting of the pattern. Also search YouTube for a Butterfly wood laser or just search for the terms: laser, cutting, plywood, engraving.

The laser beam is moving too fast for the plywood to catch fire, if the operator is doing his / her job correctly. The smoke from the scorching is no worse than burn marks from a table saw. However, you are on your own about the smell and breathing in the fumes of the adhesive from the plywood glue.

HTH

[Steve Barker DLT]

You'll also note that at least in this particular video, the wood is not being cut. Only burned to create an image. And quite the waste of time of an image if i do say so myself.

s

[Jon Danniken]

I watched the entire video, and the one thing I noted is that you obviously didn't.

Jon

[DerbyDad03]

I'd like to see the same pattern cut on a scroll-saw so I can judge how much the contrast of the burnt kerf improves (or detracts from) the look of the final project.

From the video, it appears that the light and dark contrast might make the design "pop" a bit, something you might not get with a scroll saw.