Hi there. I’m new: still awaiting delivery of my Glowforge but starting to think about the things I can make with it. Does anyone know if vulcanized fiber, a.k.a. fishpaper, is safe to laser?
On the negative side, zinc chloride is used to process it which you wouldn’t want to put on your laser, but according to Wikipedia, the intention is too leach it all back out and achieve the result:
which sounds pretty good, so it’s a matter of betting on how close to that 100% you get, I suppose. I’m not sure how to determine that except to see if the particular source of your material has a safety data sheet to look at for clues.
If it is entirely cellulose, you’ve got a polysaccharide that will give off some nasty stuff for you (but not so much for the machine) when it burns like carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and formaldehyde, but I’d guess that they’d be produced in quantities similar to lasering wood. So like when you laser wood, you’ll want to make sure you’re venting the vast majority of it outside.
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