Laser capability
Can my laser do this material?
Most answers to this question online are one word long and wrong about half the time, because the real answer usually has a condition hanging off it. Clear acrylic and black acrylic behave nothing alike, and neither do bare aluminum and anodized aluminum. Each page here names the condition and the mechanism behind it, then works through nine different things people mean by "can it do this".
The questions we have answered
- Can a fiber laser engrave wood?
Yes, and dark marks come easily. The catch is that a fiber laser is still the wrong tool for most wood work, and the reason is spot size and working field rather than physics.
- Can a diode laser cut acrylic?
Black or pigmented acrylic, yes. Clear acrylic, no, and no amount of power fixes it. The beam passes straight through.
- Can a CO₂ laser engrave aluminum?
10.6µm light bounces off bare aluminum, so a CO₂ laser cannot touch it, and that holds for all nine goals. Anodized coatings and marking compounds are a different story.
More pairings are coming. We add them as we can actually answer them, with measured grids where we have run the tests and clearly labeled published data where we have not.
