Can I laser cut Acetate?

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I’m looking into a new project and I need to cut some material like acetate. It needs to be really thin but flexible and won’t rip easily. I was thinking of a material like a japanese pencil board, but I’m not entirely sure what they are made of. I’d like something that is white or I can paint white. I’ll be using this in a back-lit project and I’m trying to figure out a way to defuse the light. I’m thinking of using a material similarly used for stencils. I’m thinking acetate but I don’t want anything clear. Any suggestions?

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I have cut stencil Mylar (which is polyester) in 7 mil and 10 mil thicknesses and it cuts well. I got it from our own @smcgathyfay. Great quality and price. I believe the 7 is translucent blue and the 10 is white.

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Awesome! Thanks! I’ll message them!

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What settings did you use?

I am about to try .005 duralar that I usually use on the cameo cutter.
I’ll post my results.

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Success! I think this will make a good replacement for the Silhouette Cameo!

I tried .005 Duralar - clear and matte. The settings that worked for me:
Speed: 500 Power: 30 - clean cut through, super slight singeing.

  • A power of 20 also cut through but not cleanly. I had to use a bit of pressure to pop the shapes out.
  • I didn’t mask off the clear, which I have not tried before. I was worried about the laser reflecting, but nothing seemed different than cutting with the matte.
  • The material is .005 mil, which to my understanding is .0.000005 inches. Either way, the glow forge software rounded the material thickness up to .01, which I assume is some sort of min thickness.

I’m pretty stoked about the results coming from Cameo since with their software you had to export each layer of a multi color stencil as a separate dfx file from Illustrator. So far with glowforge, I’ve had really good luck with the softrware correctly separating out the layers. Super cool.

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I used 500 speed and 50 power. It seemed to work pretty well!

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Thank you for putting the setting in. This is amazing. I think we need some spread sheet that shows how much power to cut.

Thanks again.

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Thanks for posting about this.

I’m looking for a similar material to use for keyboard/instrument panel overlays. The idea is to print the overly graphic onto paper and then laminate a clear plastic sheet to the top and bottom and then use the GF to cut out the spaces.

Can anyone recommend a material with the following:

  • 5 to 7 mil
  • Adhesive backed
  • Clear
  • Laser safe

Thanks,

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I don’t know about printing on it, but I use 7 mil mylar a bunch for stencils.

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