Glowforge and epoxy resin

[leonard.bell]

I use my glowforge primarily to engrave wood. I’ve had good success and I am happy to have the glowforge as one of the tools in my shop. Recently I have started to experiment with epoxy resins. Mostly I use it along with various pigments to fill in engraved images in wood. It works really well with flowers and other designs to make it look like a painted image embedded in wood. Now I am thinking of epoxy resin on the wood surface. I am considering using my glowforge to engrave into the cured resin.
I have seen many examples in the glowforge community of beautiful work done with acrylic, but have found nothing working with epoxy resin.

My question is, Has anyone done this? Will the heat of the laser melt the resin? Do I need to be concerned with toxic fumes?

Thanks…

[Jules]

There have been a couple of past discussions on it, but I think the consensus was it is a better idea to use the epoxy after the fact. (Can’t remember why it’s not a good idea to laser it, but I’m thinking no.)

[robermar36]

Cutting Epoxy Resin

This is a similar question to those who wanted to cut pre-preg carbon fiber or fiberglass sheet. There can be some seriously nasty fumes generated by the epoxy resin and a serious fire hazard. Commercial outfits who do cut this type of material use a blanket of inert gas to avoid the fire hazard and to keep the fumes more contained. I would not suggest trying it with the GF.

[eflyguy]

From: http://atxhackerspace.org/wiki/Laser_Cutter_Materials

Epoxy is an aliphatic resin, strongly cross-linked carbon chains. A CO2 laser can’t cut it, and the resulting burned mess creates toxic fumes ( like cyanide! ). Items coated in Epoxy, or cast Epoxy resins must not be used in the laser cutter. ( see Fiberglass )

You could dye and pour acrylic resin, however.

[henryhbk]

You could dye

Do you change color? I guess to cyan…