All about leather

At this point that is a task left to the user.

1 Like

Is air filtration prudent for cutting various types of leather, even if it’s being vented outside? I’ve heard two things that lead me to that question: 1) I’m told that laser cutting leather is unpleasantly smelly, 2) some leathers such as chrome-tanned might produce toxic by-products when laser cut. (BTW, that’s a bummer about the health and safety issues with chrome-tanned, as it’s one of the dominant leather types out there).

Simply venting the GF outside simply moves issues 1 and 2 to the other side of the window, and now the neighbors become unwilling participants. My original understanding was the air filter should be used if one can’t vent to the outside, but should you also consider adding an air filter if you’ll be cutting leather?

1 Like

If you’re not going to be venting to somewhere else (outside being the most popular choice) you should get an air filter. An air filter costs more and has a filter that eventually has to be replaced - arguments against. It filters particulates plus the activated carbon portion will bond various things. Does carbon bind with hexavalent chromium, the result of the chromium III used to tan the leather being incinerated, I don’t know but there are chemists on this board who may be able to provide an informed opinion. The OSHA regulation for hexavalent chromium is an eight hour weighted average where the amount of hexavalent chromium is not to exceed five micrograms per cubic meter. By my calculations a glowforge will definitely exhale more micrograms of vaporized leather than the OSHA standard inside an enclosed room. For a cut of pretty much any length. How much of that is dead cow/pig/goat/sheep/deer/stingray vapor and how much is hexavalent chromium, again I don’t know, but it is going to mainly be meat. When vented outside where there is a lot of cubic meters of air and wind blowing it all around you and the neighbors are going to be fine. I believe I read that the real health issue of chrome tanned leather, besides pollution from tanneries in countries with lax regulations and/or enforcement, is when people burn scraps as cooking fuel/heating fuel. Factor in that chrome tanned leather doesn’t cut well under a laser, so it won’t be happening much, and I don’t see it as much of a problem.

1 Like

So the nasty bits that get vaporized are a small fraction of the total effluence, and once vented outside will get diluted dramatically further. I can picture this being a non-issue for rural and suburban settings - not so sure about a crowded apartment or condo setting.

I’ve observed that the large air cleaners that laser cutter companies use at trade shows don’t stop everything. I can smell if they’re cutting wood from 30ft away. Fortunately for me, that evokes positive childhood memories of camping trips. I’ve been told I won’t have the same feelings around the smell of laser-cutting leather, so venting outside seems like a priority for working with leather.

1 Like

So there’s all kinds of leather (veg-tanned, chrome-tanned, rawhide, cow, pig, kangaroo, etc.), and I’m hearing they all cut differently. Alas, the terms I hear are very subjective: “like butter”, “cooked mess”, “shriveled like bacon”, and so on. The picturesque speech is certainly fun to read!

Photos would be really helpful here. Could GF and/or those that have tested laser cutting various leathers post actual photos of the results? I don’t mean cleaned-up marketing photos - I’m talking close-ups of just the cut/engrave, and in particular a rogue’s gallery of the “disasters” would be really-really helpful - documenting how things go wrong is often the most instructive. Thanks in advance!

3 Likes

That would be cool. Keep in mind, though, @gdmccormack, that the leather types you listed actually exist as combinations of ingredients and treatments–almost infinite combinations. Here’s what you deal with on each piece of leather:

Species: cow, pig, kangaroo, deer, alligator, sting ray, salmon, etc.

Age or type of animal: bull, calf, doe, etc.

Cut: whole hide, side bend, belly, etc. (see below)


**Weight,** which is actually thickness (see below) ![|313x500](upload://uk9AK8v8bdkPdOJPmMuMffTs5yb.png)

Tannage: veg-tanned, chrome-tanned, alum-tawed, oil-tanned, brain-tanned, some mystery combination thereof??? such as latigo (veg+chrome) and bridle (veg+oil), etc.

Treatment: nubuck, freezing, ironing, sandblasting, etc.

Colorant: none, oil-based, vegetable dye, wax, alcohol-based, acrylic-based (many of which can be either a penetrating or surface treatment), etc.

Finish: none, carnauba wax, beeswax, acrylic spray, etc.

I think Glowforge is planning to sell materials, and I’m sure they would be able to guarantee the composition of their leathers. Speaking from experience, when you buy from a leather factory, you also have a good chance of being told the truth about what you’re getting, though if you get a new sales employee, you’re mostly getting good guesses. When you buy from a retailer like Tandy or craft stores, your chances of getting any real information about the composition drop dramatically, except when you buy rawhide or the simplest veg-tan stuff that’s meant for tooling. When you pick up a cool jacket at the thrift store or a sidewalk couch, hoping to upcycle them, you’ll have very little clue, and the default guess should be chrome-tanned.

So, if we’re going to do a database of leathers (which I think is a STELLAR idea, we should have the tester note everything they know about each sample (including source), all the settings they used, etc. I think the community would get the most benefit from tests of common leathers from known dealers (veg-tanned natural-color kangaroo leather in the K-Craft line from Packer Leather, Tandy’s split pigskin garment suede, etc.). That way, people can have consistent results and be able to order online with confidence.

32 Likes

@morganstanfield You kick butt and chew bubble gum!

7 Likes

@morganstanfield, thank you for that background, hopefully we’re off to a good start! I understand the type of leather will drive the behavior under the laser beam - what I’m struggling with is the language that describes what happened when someone tried to cut or engrave a particular type of leather. Pictures are worth a thousand words…

Just my bias, but I’m particularly interested in what doesn’t (subjectively) cut well and why - and when someone says don’t even try, then it gets even more interesting! “Shrivels up like bacon”, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if that’s the effect you’re going for. Shriveled-up bacon can still taste pretty good :wink:

3 Likes

Agreed–I’m all for having the photos be part of the database.

1 Like

One of the reasons we felt we had to get into the materials business is because the liability for us speculating about what a given vendor was selling was just too high. We had too many experiences of a retailer selling X one day and identical-looking (but not lasering) Y the next. Or getting material from two locations that both said they were the same thing (3M adhesive, for which an MSDS was readily available) only to have them arrive and it was clear that one or both was lying, because they were visibly different from each other.

TLDR is that we’re going to spend our time making sure the materials we sell are awesome, safe, reliable, and work perfectly, and we won’t be in the business of characterizing others’ materials.

Then sometimes we’ll forget and engrave titanium sporks. More of a guideline than a rule, I’ll grant you. :wink:

13 Likes

To what degree will GF enable owners to characterize their own leather? Can we run test cuts/engraves, experimentally identify optimum power, speed, etc., then apply those customized settings to our own material?

Yes. 100%. You will be able to make your own custom settings.

1 Like

@spike, thanks for the quick response! Where can I learn more details about how that custom setting process works?

I don’t believe a lot of details are out there about the saving and assigning of custom settings (as in a how to do it, what the UI looks like, user manual entry, etc.).

Dan references it in a few posts: Custom settings for bacon, etc.

We have zero insight into how the S/W is set up. The community has been told that we can save our on presets but that is about it. Still waiting for someone to get their hands on the S/W or interfaces. This following is about as close to an official answer as we have: [quote=“dan, post:4, topic:710, full:true”]
There probably won’t be any presets, because the variation between e.g. two similar looking sheets of plywood can be infinite. Like, one sheet will be really quick, and the other impossible, and many values in between.

You will be able to create your own presets, and we’ll have performance characteristics for materials we sell.
[/quote]

1 Like

Just as @gdmccormack and @rpegg said.

Right now, only in-house and testers has access to this.

The testers are under NDA so can not openly talk about it.
Maybe this might change down the road and info will start filtering to the members.

Spike. You may be aware of folks with Beta machines. There is no way for me to know. So far, I have not seen anything from the company or even from the community that hints the program has started other than the plan was to begin the Beta program by this time. That doesn’t mean you aren’t correct. You may even have less than public info. Hoping that someone at a Seattle makerspace will let us know they have seen one.

1 Like

All I am am saying is, the people that “DO” know the answer, can not talk about it right now.
Nothing more…

But as you already pointed out, @dan already talked about presets in a open forum, so that info is already out there.

1 Like

Understood. We all are stuck in a circular logic situation. It’s a Schrodinger’s Cat problem. The Beta units exist and don’t exist at the same time.

4 Likes

You got it! :grin:

2 Likes