LaserCanvas
Common laser cutting materials and how each behaves
Most hobby work happens on six materials: plywood and MDF (cheap, forgiving, smoky), cast acrylic (beautiful edges, CO2 only for clear), vegetable tanned leather (chrome tanned is not safe), card and felt (fast, and a fire risk), and anodised or coated metal for marking rather than cutting. Everything else is a variation on how much smoke, melt or char you are willing to accept.
Three questions, then the material list
Before looking anything up, three things decide whether a material is worth trying at all.
- Is it safe? Some materials release genuinely dangerous gas. That list is short, absolute, and worth knowing before anything else.
- Does your wavelength touch it? A blue diode does nothing to clear acrylic. A CO2 does nothing to bare metal. This is not a power problem.
- Are you cutting or marking? Slate, glass, anodised aluminium and stainless are marking materials. No hobby laser cuts them.
Wood and sheet goods
This is where nearly everyone starts, and for good reason: cheap, forgiving, widely available and it cuts on almost any machine.
| Material | What it is like | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Birch plywood | The default. Cuts cleanly, engraves with good contrast, glues well | Internal voids and glue lines stop the beam unpredictably — the same settings can cut one sheet and not the next |
| Generic plywood | Cheaper, more variable | Much heavier glue content. Expect more smoke and more failed cuts |
| MDF | Perfectly uniform, no voids, no grain, very consistent results | Dense resin smoke that stains badly and smells. Extraction is not optional. Edges are always dark |
| Basswood | Light, soft, very clean cuts and crisp engraving | Soft enough to mark with a fingernail; scorches easily |
| Balsa | Cuts almost instantly at low power | Extremely easy to set alight. Watch it constantly |
| Oak, walnut, bamboo | Handsome, hard, good for finished pieces | Dense and slow, and hardwood grain gives uneven cut depth |
| Cork | Cuts easily, engraves with soft contrast | Crumbly edge, and it smoulders — it can keep glowing after the beam has gone |
Acrylic
The material that makes laser cutting look like magic, and the one with the sharpest distinctions between types.
- Cast acrylic is the one you want. It cuts with a flame-polished, genuinely glossy edge, and it engraves to a frosted white that looks superb.
- Extruded acrylic cuts slightly faster but engraves to a dull, nearly clear mark rather than frosted white. For engraving, cast is worth the price difference.
- Mirrored acrylic should be cut face-down, so the beam is not reflected back into the optics.
- Clear acrylic cannot be cut on a diode laser. Blue light passes straight through it. Dark or tinted cast acrylic works; clear does not, at any power.
Acrylic is also the material where the usual advice inverts. On plywood, faster and more passes gives a cleaner result. On acrylic a single slower pass gives the polished edge, because the melt is doing the work. And heavy air assist can frost an edge you wanted glossy.
Leather, fabric and paper
| Material | Notes |
|---|---|
| Vegetable tanned leather | Cuts and engraves beautifully, with a rich dark burnished mark. The safe leather choice |
| Chrome tanned leather | Avoid. Chrome tanning can release hexavalent chromium. If the supplier cannot tell you which it is, do not cut it |
| Felt (wool) | Cuts cleanly with a lightly sealed edge. Synthetic felt melts instead — check the fibre |
| Cotton and denim | Cut well; edges seal slightly, which is useful for appliqué |
| Polyester | Melts rather than cutting, which seals the edge neatly. Not toxic, but it is a melt, not a cut |
| Cardstock and cardboard | Extremely fast, and the most common cause of small fires. Never unattended |
| Chipboard | Thick, dense card. Smoky, and the edge is always dark |
Marking materials: metal, slate, glass
These cannot be cut by any hobby laser. They can be marked, which is a different and very useful thing.
- Anodised aluminium is the best of them. The laser bleaches the dye, giving a crisp permanent white mark with no coating or spray needed.
- Painted or powder-coated metal marks the same way — you are removing the coating, not the metal.
- Stainless steel and brass need either a fibre laser, or a marking compound applied to the surface and fired with a CO2.
- Slate engraves to a pale, high-contrast mark and is very forgiving. One of the easiest impressive results available.
- Glass and ceramic tile frost rather than engrave. The mark is shallow and can look speckled; a wet paper towel over the surface reduces micro-fracturing.
The awkward cases
- EVA foam cuts well and is popular for costume work, but it melts, it ignites readily, and the fumes are unpleasant. Good extraction and constant attention.
- Rubber sheet cuts and engraves (it is how laser stamps are made) but the smell is genuinely awful and it leaves heavy residue.
- Mylar cuts cleanly for stencils, but thin sheet distorts with heat — tape it down flat.
- Anything unlabelled is a no until you have identified it. The copper wire test takes two minutes.
What to buy first
If you are stocking a bench from nothing: 3 mm birch plywood for almost everything, 3 mm cast acrylic in a dark colour (which works on diode and CO2 alike), and a sheet of cardstock for prototyping shapes before committing good material. That covers most of what a new machine gets used for, and all three are forgiving while you learn the settings.
Common questions
What is the easiest material to start with?
3 mm birch plywood. It cuts on almost any machine, tolerates imperfect settings, engraves with good contrast, glues and finishes well, and is cheap enough that ruining a sheet does not matter. Its one quirk is internal voids, which is worth knowing about early.
Why does my plywood cut in some places and not others?
Almost always a glue void or a dense glue line inside the sheet. Plywood is layers bonded together, and the bond is not uniform. Hold the sheet up to a light before an important cut, or accept that plywood needs slightly more margin than MDF.
Cast or extruded acrylic — does it matter?
For cutting only, barely. For engraving, a great deal: cast acrylic engraves to a bright frosted white, extruded engraves to a dull nearly-clear mark. If the piece has any engraving on it, buy cast.
Can I cut fabric without it fraying?
Yes, and it is one of the better reasons to use a laser on fabric. The heat lightly seals the edge as it cuts. Synthetics seal most, natural fibres least. Wool felt gives a particularly clean result.
How do I know if leather is vegetable or chrome tanned?
Ask the supplier — reputable leather sellers state it, because it matters for tooling and dyeing too. Vegetable tanned is typically stiffer, tan-coloured through the cross-section, and darkens with sunlight. If you cannot establish which it is, do not laser it.