How do you get rid of the burnt smell in the material after cutting? I have tried baking soda and vinegar but that didn’t work. Any other suggestions?
thanks
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Depends on the material. What are you working with?
So far draft board and regular cardboard. I plan to try acrylic this evening, hopefully there’s no lingering smell with that material.
All materials have some smell, acrylic is a really hardcore chemical smell.
The good news is that for almost all materials, if you do nothing the smell wears off (aka “gasses out”) in a day or two.
I’d say that the most common advice is to immediately dispose of all masking that was on the material (some people put it in ziploc right away to stop the smell from spreading) and just let the pieces air out somewhere.
Wiping the edges of cut wood with alcohol can remove some of the laser residue and thus reduce the gassing out time, but in my experience it’s just a matter of being patient.
It’s not a great idea to wipe acrylic with alcohol, so use caution, it can lead to cracking in some cases.
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Ok thank you so much – I’ll try that
Lightly sanding the edges also removes the char, and so, the smell.
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I actually enjoy the smell of most cut edges except leather. That reminds me too much having my hair catch fire when putting gasoline on a fire. Yeah I know…
White vinegar helps, as well.
all week I’ve been cutting acrylic from both glowforges proofgrade and the home depot one and both leaves a smell for days.
I haven’t had an issue with the acrylic. My problem was with the wood – rubbing the sides down with alcohol seemed to help. I’m not sure about the acrylic though.
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