Acrylic & Plastic

One of the more popular materials for laser cutters and engravers is acrylic.  It presents a beautiful, sophisticated appearance, all while being comparatively affordable. Don't confuse it with plastic, however. Acrylic is used in applications that mandate a high gloss, colorful, or clear, scratch resistant surface. Lucite, Perspex, and Plexiglass are the more common trade names.

Due to its physical properties acrylic can be shaped, cut, and then utilized across a whole host of applications and processes.  Unlike a CNC router a laser beam has an advantage in that it can make specific intricate and smooth cuts that a router tool can't.

Brilliant pigment colors are often formulated into acrylic.  So, laser cutting colored acrylic eliminates the need for painting which in turn decreases overall production costs.  Also, laser marking or engraving clear acrylic (Plexiglass) that has been painted offers a unique effect.

LASER ENGRAVING ACRYLIC

Laser processing cast acrylic produces a cool frosted or white effect with an overall good quality looking finish. Cast acrylic sheets are typically colored and used for low power laser engraving (typically without masking). Whereas engraving extruded acrylic will look matte grey. But, keep in mind Cast sheets have as much as a 30% thickness variance from one sheet to the next.

LASER CUTTING ACRYLIC

Although extruded acrylic has limited color selection (clear, opal and black) cutting extruded is much cleaner than cast. The laser vaporizes through extruded more easily leaving a smooth, almost glass-like, flame polished edge. Its also cheaper than cast. Cast is harder to flame polish and you'll notice a slightly rougher edge.  But, cast has that nice white contrast when engraved.

Our laser cutting machines make it easy for anyone to set up and adjust the right print driver settings to control the laser frequency (ppi) for cutting acrylic. Once the acrylic sheet is properly masked and set up on a honeycomb table the result will be a finished acrylic cut leaving edges that appear as if they were flame polished without the need for post processing clean up.