laser cut pla?

[Jacob Francois]

hello everybody,

     quick question.... I need to laser cut a material that will be flexible that I can burn out for casting.  Are there pros and cons to laser cutting pla and does anyone know if I can buy sheets of it locally?

I would 3d print it but the laser cutter will give me cleaner edges.

thanks home slices, Jacob

[Robert Kleeschulte]

I tried to laser etch PLA with the small zombies. It looked like it was going to cut fairly clean if I gave it more power. Go semi solid infill to seal the gaps on the cut edges.

I'm not sure if you can buy PLA sheets.

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[EschewObfuscation]

Hm, PLA is an unusual choice for that; would foam work for your application? One common method of metal sand casting leaves the foam in place, lets the hot metal destroy the foam as it's poured.

[Jacob Francois]

foam wont work.  it is a jewelry scale casting.  It needs to be a material I can laser cut so it has a clean surface. Is there another plastic that burns out as well as pla?

[Myles Farrell]

Talk to Scott. Scuttle butt is that he has tried lost PLA before and that there was a lot more soot. If this is super time critical i have some bricks of beeswax that i could lend you. They need another round of filtering and casting into more usable shapes, but the commercial casting wax i've used before was essentially a 50/50 mix of paraffin and beeswax. It had the perfect consistency, workable, but still stiff.

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[Andrew Ricke]

Why would you not go the machine wax route on the shapeoko?
https://www.inventables.com/technologies/machinable-wax

It's easy to handwork to cleanup details and is exactly meant for lost wax jewelry casting. The laser might work on it too, but the router can make just as clean of a surface.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 11:43 AM Myles Farrell <mylesmich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Talk to Scott. Scuttle butt is that he has tried lost PLA before and that there was a lot more soot. If this is super time critical i have some bricks of beeswax that i could lend you. They need another round of filtering and casting into more usable shapes, but the commercial casting wax i've used before was essentially a 50/50 mix of paraffin and beeswax. It had the perfect consistency, workable, but still stiff.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Jacob Francois <jafr...@gmail.com> wrote:

foam wont work.  it is a jewelry scale casting.  It needs to be a material I can laser cut so it has a clean surface. Is there another plastic that burns out as well as pla?

On Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at 1:54:39 AM UTC-6, EschewObfuscation wrote:

Hm, PLA is an unusual choice for that; would foam work for your application? One common method of metal sand casting leaves the foam in place, lets the hot metal destroy the foam as it's poured.

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