Possibly because they’ve been asked before. As per the safety DS, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to worry about.
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Uh, WTF? In the absence of any quantifier the suffix oxide implies a single oxygen (i.e. monoxide). So CO in other words. I mean carbon monoxide is carbon oxide? Weird. And as for “laser temperature” it’s freakin hot. Also nitric oxide is the normal way we write NO rather than nitrogen oxide, dioxide is a nasty airway irritant (causes silage worker’s disease - that was on my boards, but that’s a very common compound in combustion including gas stoves). And while the sheet could have been written by a non-native english speaker, chemistry is chemistry (having taken it in a very non-romance language) and almost always the language of expressing chemical compounds is in english around the world. Anyway yes as @elfguy mentioned, all this stuff is just general breakdown of stuff burning and is nicely vented by the GF fan (and not harmful to the laser)
@henryhbk and @eflyguy So you both think the hardened resin would be okay to engrave or cut.
I appreciate you taking the time to weigh in on this since you both are absolute miles away from me and my understanding of chemistry. Thanks!
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The big question when lasering is does the byproduct of vaporizing the material produce radicals that will combine with chemicals in the air (like hydrogen from moisture or oxygen/nitrogen) to form other nasty things. Chlorine for instance when released by lasering PVC compounds is very toxic on its own (it was used in WWI as a chemical warfare agent), but that’s not the problem since you are blowing it away through the vent, it’s that it combines with the hydrogen in the air to form HCL (hydrochloric acid) which isn’t particularly toxic to us (your stomach is filled with it, not that you would want to drink it…) but it is very corrosive to the laser guts. So what we are looking for is things that react with other things (and all these “oxides” are already reacted, and while things like carbon monoxide are very toxic to us but not an issue for the laser since that’s non corrosive (as any burning will produce CO) it’s wafted away i the vent and reacts with other oxygen to form CO2. In general anything you burn produces toxic stuff (breathing smoke is not a good thing) but that gets removed. So in general toxicity to us is less the problem than destroying your laser; that being said I wouldn’t want to count on the laser to remove something REALLY toxic like cyanide gas (hydrogen cyanide) since a small amount leaking could be lethal, but regularly toxic stuff like CO is fine.
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I think so.
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