Glass Engraving - Worried about fumes / particles

Hi there!
I have my machine vented out a window, but it’s not completely airtight and some air does come back in.
If I want to engrave on glass, how worried should I be about breathing in micro glass particles in the air? How much dust comes off the lasers?

Thank you in advance!!!

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Welcome to the community! There is SO much info here :slight_smile:

As far as breathing glass, I’m pretty sure you’d have to have your mouth over the exit port to manage that - glass is heavy even at that scale and particles will drop rather than get blown about. If you’re truly worried, you might be able to put a pre-filter at the end of your hose - but be aware that it will fill up quickly and need to be changed regularly or it will block that same hose.

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Compared to almost anything else engraving glass or ceramic is about the least dangerous. You breath as much Sahara sand blown across the Atlantic.

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No danger of airborne particulate with glass. Depositing the heat of the laser on glass has a thermal shock and micro-fractures the surface, which remains intact. It won’t vaporize any material.

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That said, you should still make an effort to tighten up your exit path if you are smelling smoke all the time. There’s tons of info in the forum about doing that. If it’s the seal around the board that your hose goes through in the window, I’ve found that splitting a piece of air conditioning insulation hose lengthwise and wrapping that over the edges of the board provides a pretty good seal.

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Agreed with cynd11 - seal it up really well. I vent through an enclosure I made for my window in the basement - the enclosure is held in place with a pressure fit in the frame and with braces I made in the window frame. This “sealed” it pretty well, but some gorilla duct tape later and it’s airtight, although it doesn’t look very pretty.

Then again, it is a basement window…

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