Hi Dave,
When doing control panel layouts on reverse lasermark
I use that method and set speed and power to vector cut
holes so that i do not cut trough front mask at all.
No water mist.

Tont @ MCE
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Thanks for all of your responses. I was hoping to learn how much of an impact the misting had in actually lessening the heat buildup on the under side of the plastic.

I don't do a great deal of vector cutting, but the other day I stepped a little outside of my comfort zone with my creative thoughts and came up with a plaque design for a customer that uses their 3-color logo as the plaque plate that would ultimately contain some engraved text.

Since the logo would be cut out of three different colors of material, then put together like a puzzle, I wanted the cutting tolerances to be pretty precise, hopefully producing a clean look at the seems with no noticable gaps.

Well, I did my cutting today, will raster the text and adhere to the plaque boards Monday.

I hope my customer is as thrilled with the results as I am. I was a little nervous over this one, but my equipment came through with flying colors.

I'll post a picture of the finished product on Monday.

Dave:

For most of my cutting applications the Rowmark suggestion isn't the answer. I'm doing name tags and office name plates which obviously must be engraved and cut face up on the laser in the same operation.

IF it's a straight vector cut then I agree that cutting from the back is better, but on a grid and all the way through. The trick is not to overpower the cut and to mask it.

When doing inlays cutting from the back is the preferred method as you can reduce the laser kerf and get a better fit.

Herre's a picture (not good) of an abalone inlay I just finished. The abalone was cut from the back in numerous passes.

Dave...

When cutting the inside pieces of the plastic, how did you account for the kerf of the laser cut....do you make those pieces slightly larger? Ive not done any inlay, but it's one of those things on the list I'd like to try (...the same for wood intarsia.) Does this technique improve the cut?

Jim

Here's a post where Mike Mackenzie elaborates on the inlay process and in an ensuing post, the abalone (Ablam) material I spoke of:

http://engravingetc.org/forum/index.php?webtag=EE&msg=647.9

Jim,

Thank you.

I did a test run on a small piece of the same material which resulted in such a nice snug fit, I decided to run without an adjustment. I used Rowmark's LaserMax material from Johnson Plastics.

Mike offered very sound advice. The figure will likely need to be adjusted based on your machine, as well as the material you are cutting, be it wood, plastic, acrylic, etc.