Common laser cutters are primarily used to cut materials like wood, some plastics, and paper and cardboard, although there are more powerful laser cutters that can cut through metals and much thicker materials. Laser cutters are a great all around tool because they can be used to make so many different styles of design laser cutters are used for anything from cardbaord prototypes to rastered artwork. Once a design is sent to a laser cutter, the machine uses a laser beam to cut into or etch into the material on the cutting bed. A designer can design something in some sort of design software, and then send it to a laser cutter to have it cut out automatically, with just the push of a button. Step 1: What Is a Laser Cutter?Ī laser cutter is a type of CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) machine, meaning that it is controlled via a computer.

In this guide I'll explain what laser cutters are, what they can do, and how you can use them, and I'll also provide some resources if you want to learn and do more with laser cutters. Laser cutters are really handy tools when it comes to prototyping and manufacturing they are used in machine shops on the industrial scale to cut large pieces of material, they are used by hardware companies to create cheap, quick prototypes, and they are tools used by makers and artists as a DIY fabrication tool to bring their digital designs into the physical world. Apart from cutting, laser cutters can also raster or etch designs onto work pieces by heating up the surface of the workpiece, thus burning off the top layer of the material to change its appearance where the raster operation was performed. Laser cutters use a thin, focused laser beam to pierce and cut through materials to cut out patterns and geometries specified by designers. A laser cutter is a prototyping and manufacturing tool used primarily by engineers, designers, and artists to cut and etch into flat material.

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