The question of laser kerf comes up occasionally in Adafruit’s weekly Ask-an-Engineer chat, so I figured this would be of interest to some folks. James Williamson shares his method for finding the kerf of a laser cutter in different materials and material thicknesses. He writes:
Kerf is determined by material properties and thickness, the focal length of the lens and the gas used while cutting. Our laser cutter uses a lens with a 50mm focal length and uses compressed air to push out the vapourised/molten swarf.
By cutting a rectangle of material and then cutting 9 rectangles within it you get 10 cuts. When these 9 rectangles are pushed together at one end of the “frame”, the resulting gap at the other end is the sum of the kerfs. Dividing this gap by ten gives the average kerf for that material and material thickness.
He uses a feeler gauge to measure the width of the gap and then divides by the number of cuts (10, in this case) to get the kerf for that particular material/thickness/feedrate/power combination on his cutter.
Josh Judkins of Ponoko added this in the comments:
We’ve found that kerf widths can vary even on the same material sheet, depending on whether you’re cutting a straight or curved line, or the laser head is moving on the x or y axis.
Good info to keep in mind.
You can check out James’ blog post about it here. Nice work, James!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Wanted to also share our template.
http://brainstormkingston.com/index.php/fun/special-projects/35-measuring-laser-kerf