As laser cutters don’t bring any mechanical force to the object that has to be cut or engraved they often don’t have any fixing for the material. It simply lies freely in the machine.

When you want to cut some plywood with a laser cutter the problem that occurs most of the time is that the plywood doesn’t stay in a flat state. It either can be already waved when you buy it or store it at your site and the laser can do the same while cutting because of the laser’s heat. You can see this also when cutting acrylic heavily. This effect will always make you a problem because the laser needs a flat object to work on. Otherwise there is no proper focussing in every region of the cutting area. For good results your plywood has to be flat before and during the cutting process. So you have to make it flat by fixing it on the machine. Continue reading →