Cardboard Living Hinge

Your post was hysterical … and it also sounded so much like something my husband would do/say that I don’t think he’s going to be allowed to touch my laser now.

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I cut cardboard all the time and have never had any issues with fire. Sometimes I’ll get a little bit of a flame coming from the laser’s current cut location, but nothing that sets my part on fire. If for some reason you do have this issue, just tone down your laser settings and you’ll be fine.

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When I had chance to use an Epilog at my buddies work, I practiced cutting some living hinges out of cardboard. We ran into a few issues.

  1. First pass, the power/speed settings were to low/high. We cut through the top just fine, but didn’t cut through the bottom. Took some adjusting to get it right (without fire).
  2. You will get some flare ups no matter what settings you use. We were going fast enough with enough air assist that it only caused minimal damage to the whole part.
  3. Some of the cuts were small enough that they landed off the corrugation in the cardboard, so they just fell off.
  4. You do not get the same springiness from cardboard as you do with stiffer materials. So even if you make it, its not going to behave exactly the same.

This was just my one experience cutting cardboard, so take it with a grain of salt.

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Another chemical I am going to try with cardboard is liquid wood hardener that is used on punky wood. I do have the label and will read the chemical contents soon! :-)))

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It sounds like I will mainly be using Chipboard or Very Thin compressed Cardboard when doing living hinge testing/prototyping.

When I am prototyping I want to be testing out the design, I don’t want to be testing out my fire extinguisher too. :fire::fire_engine:

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