I’m interested in making some items - and I’d like to cut salt dough… has anyone tried it? Any tips?
Welcome to the forum! I have no experience with salt dough (opening google in another tab…) but am interested in what comes of this!
I’m not enough of a chemist to know but I’d be leary of anything with significant amounts of salt because if any of the salt breaks down into its basic elements (sodium and chlorine) this would destroy your unit and be dangerous to you.
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Short answer, no. Try a piece and smell it. Bake it and taste it.
Google is your friend.
I haven’t done salt dough, only gingerbread and gumpaste. I imagine it could be done though, but I hadn’t even thought about the salt content causing issues with the laser. I wonder what effect baking has on the salt. Most recipes I have seen are 2:1 flour to salt, but I have actually never made salt dough, so I’m not sure what it’s like after baking.
The construction grade gingerbread I cut is very hard once baked, and it cuts through well enough, although you have to do a lot of testing to find reliable settings. Even then, it can vary due to how humidity affects the baked piece and how thick it is.
Sorry, I know that isn’t terribly helpful! But I would love to see what you end up doing with it!
The key fact in any new material consideration.
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I’m not sure how much energy it takes to actually produce free radical chlorine gas from NaCl but it’s going to be a lot. Salt melts at 1,474°F and boils at 2,669°F, and I’m not even sure that breaks the bonds. Any chemists in the house?
Hmm:
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Baking temps are well below what it takes to free chlorine ions from the mix. The sodium and chlorine are already separated but tied to other mostly water molecules that then become negatively charged and held to positively charged other(mostly water) molecules, the temps of a laser drives everything apart.
OK so chlorine ions, if you have a Na+ and a Cl- kicking around it will take some doing to produce Cl2. The Cl- ions are not going to want to hang out, and there’s no hydrogen ions laying around to grab onto. I really don’t think this is a big concern, my bet is that you’re going to get a whole lot of oxides if anything. If we had to worry about this, cooking with salt would be really dangerous.
By contract, in PVC, the hydrogen comes from the polyvinyl, so it’s not like you’re making free radical chlorine that grabs onto water vapor, it’s a direct byproduct.
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If we cooked with salt at pottery temperatures. There is a pottery style that salt is introduced at 2K degrees F and you don’t want to breathe the fumes, but the kilns are ablative, like new kilns every few firings. 2KF is no biggy in center of laser.
Still doesn’t account for the lack of hydrogen ions for the chlorine to grab onto. HCl is your problem in this situation, not oxides.
All of your personal water and chemicals provide plenty, but humidity will do fine if nothing else is available.