I have cut gold mirror acrylic a few times and I keep getting some faint scratches once done.
The mirror acrylic is from Canal Plastics and it is perfect.
I mirrored the image and cut it from the grey side instead which helped
and also masked Bothe sides
and laid the mirror on cardboard, but I was still left with minor scratches (this was the best result so far)
I have been using the PG Yellow Mirror settings
Some questions
Can I cut with the plastic that comes with the mirror acrylic? Or is this unsafe?
How can I ensure 100% scratch free- as I would not feel comfortable selling any item with even a minor scratch
Welcome to the forum! I don’t know if this has any impact on how your acrylic looks but a couple of things…“PG Yellow Mirror settings”…there is no such setting for PG acrylic, so not sure what your meaning with this. The other thing is this; “cut with the plastic”…may I assume that you mean your Canal acrylic comes with plastic masking on it? If that’s so, it’s likely that it’s not cast acrylic but extruded. The fact that it’s mirrored acrylic also points to it being extruded. Extruded can be cut OK, but engraving it tends to produce a messier outcome. I suggest that you remove the plastic and remask it with paper. Might help…but other than that, perhaps someone else will have better advice.
I’d definitely suggest paper masking - you can leave it on until you’re completely done so no chance of scratching in the machine. Amazon sells it, as well as a lot of other places. You can get it 6"-24" wide depending on the width of your project. Do not leave the plastic masking on - it’ll just melt into your acrylic
If your scratches are actually cuts by the laser, then you may have artifacts in your art. If you’re using vectors go into the points view and do a select all to see if there are any unattached points outside your art. If you’re using a raster there may be points that are just off white so they’re invisible to your eye, but not to the laser. You can select everything that is white or really close to white and delete it, leaving only the stuff you actually want engraved.
More to the point, the machine does not move the material on the bed, so the only way for it to introduce marks that look like scratches is if you have design elements that are commanding the laser to make them.
Seems like most of the suggestions have been covered in the post already. I wonder if it’s surface scratches or edge scratches which maybe are flash back, overburn on corners causing heat fractures along the edge?