I have a friend who makes gun holsters out of Kydex. I was researching to see if it was suitable material to laser and I came across a very good pictorial warning on what lasering deadly vinyl can do. I had read the warnings about PVC vinyls, but hadn’t seen the actual damage. If it can do this to metal, imagine the damage to your lungs. Be careful and use due diligence when putting material in your laser!
it binds with omnipresent water to make hcl; the gas itself is not as rapidly corrosive (of course it would still do damage).
also, just because it does that to metal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s as damaging to your lungs. it’s certainly not good for them but laser machines also don’t have a tightly integrated repair system in place, either…and with proper venting you’d never know anyway.
still, definitely not good for doing on a machine you care about.
Of course it does, that makes sense. I guess I’d never worked with it so I’d never given it much thought. If by machine you care about you mean my body, I’d definitely agree. I wouldn’t put it near my forge either mind!
haha i mostly meant a laser cutter; i tend to assume no one sits in the ablation chamber and directly breathes in byproducts without a death wish. proper venting means it poses very little risk to you, just a very expensive risk to your wallet.
of course, some people still use lasers to cut vinyl. it’s fast and at a certain point it can make fiscal sense if you have sufficient business. not something i can ever imagine doing, though!
sure, but i’ll reiterate that it depends on the filter. there are filters available that can handle acidic vapor, but they tend to be on the pricey side.
Ouch. I knew it was really bad, but the visual really helps lock that in. Thanks for sharing, I will be hanging this on the wall in the new maker space.
The suburb i lived in had a mix of modern houses interspersed with the old Samurai houses. The oldest one in the suburb was > 500 years old.
Many of them had charring done in the traditional way, and they were still in excellent condition.
The area only had 2 bombs dropped on it during the entire war which damaged none of the houses and completely missed the Temple
What was intense was the huge network of tunnels running under the houses linking them all up. It was designed as an escape for families of the Samurai in ‘less gentle times’ though they are apparently only used by kids for hard-core games of hide-and-seek now.
I tried to enter one but my 190cm body was not fitting in a tunnel designed for the old Japanese size of ~5’
Be careful and use due diligence when putting material in your laser!
