Good Morning, I was gifted an aura for my birthday from my wife. I have been wanting a laser for cutting stencils for a while now, I have been paying someone to cut them for me on his CO2 Laser. I use 5, 7 and 10 mil mylar purchased from 3m. Before opening the Aura I did a quick search to see if it would cut the material and saw that it would. after setting up and trying some tests i am realizing that I may have been mislead. My question first is has anyone had success with this on the Aura and if so how? This is the only thing I would use this machine for and now am stuck with an Aura and Filter with no way to return it. I wasnt even getting an etch on some tries it didnt look like anything happened, I did get a small circle to cut at 6 speed and 10 power, but when I tried anything more detailed it didnt cut through or melted the plastic? sorry if this is scattered just trying to include my whole experience so far. This was all tried using 10 mil.
Welcome to the forum.
Where did you see that the Aura would cut the material? Because it is a diode laser, it will struggle or fail to cut many clear, white or blue acrylic type materials because of the wavelength of the laser.
With any non Proofgrade material, you will need to do some testing. I believe you will need to do multiple passes to cut the mylar, and you will need to avoid melting the edges back together. I suggest a faster speed, a slightly lower power and mulitple passes. Maybe try 33/7.5/3 and see what happens on the thickest mylar. Are you masking the material?
Thank you for the reply, no I’m not masking the material. What does that mean, Like putting a darker material over it?
This has been discussed before, I think this thread will be of some help:
Good luck! (and if you try the black variant let us know how it goes)
Masking means that you coat it with something. Typically you’d use a paper tape, as described in #2 in my FAQ:
Did you get your problem resolved?
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