[JackWilliam]

Hello,

I need to laser cut cotton fabric. I have just bought a cheap chinese laser cutter which has no honeycomb bed.

What kind of bed would be best for cutting the cotton fabric? Should I go honeycomb?

Also, is it necessary to use air assist whilst cutting fabric? If so, is it likely to blow the fabric around to an extent?

Thanks

[fishface]

The last time that I cut fabric, I had a knife edge table, so the fabric kept sagging between the knifes. I considered keeping it taught by adding magnets, but unfortunately, my table was aluminium so that didn't work! I ended up just laying a piece of sacrificial cardboard on the table and then lying the fabric on that, and keeping it taught by placing a few pieces of metal on that. It all seemed to work just fine.
I did have air assist, and would always recommend that you use it as it will increase the amount of time between needing to clean your lens. I made my own for about £10.

[Melody-gweike]

Honeycomb table is not suitable for cutting fabric, it is designed for engraving. Knives bar table should be the right one.

Air assist is also very useful when cutting to avoid burning marks.



Melody
[email protected] [email protected]
skype:melody.gweike

[gweikelaser]

Hi ,
If for fabric cutting ,the auto feeding machine will be more suitable ,see enclosed photo, it is with a special table ,similar with honey comb but more better.

Any others feel free to ask me

Best Regards
Lucy Lee
G.WEIKE LASER
[email protected]

Hello,

I need to laser cut cotton fabric. I have just bought a cheap chinese laser cutter which has no honeycomb bed.

What kind of bed would be best for cutting the cotton fabric? Should I go honeycomb?

Also, is it necessary to use air assist whilst cutting fabric? If so, is it likely to blow the fabric around to an extent?

Thanks

[JackWilliam]

OK, thanks for the information.

So presumably it is straight forward to make a home made knife table.
Is the spacing of the knives important? Obviously the fabric will be more stable if the knives are closer together.

[fishface]

I made mine by just bolting some pieces of 12mm angle aluminium to a 6mm alumninium sheet (2mm would do), then adding 6mm threaded rod to each corner to make the whole table height adjustable. Make sure that the knives run in the direction of fume extraction.
They need to be close enough together to support the work; that's about the only criteria for spacing. I made mine about 35mm apart.
For other non-fabric work, I can now confirm that a pin table is far superior as there are practically no marks on the back of the material.

[JackWilliam]

Great, it sounds fairly straight forward to make a knife table.

Just checking, a pin table is presumably a bed in which pins protrude and support the work. So to make one of these I could drill holes in an aluminium sheet and screw m2 screws through. Would something like this work?

Thanks

[fishface]

that's pretty much what I did, but I used M3 and I added dome head nuts on top for the material to rest on. They have a very small contact area, but are not sharp so will not damage the material.
I added 3 bits of M3 threaded rod to make it height adjustable; 3 legs are better than 4 as it is much easier to level it with just 3 legs.

I tried to upload an image of it, but it reported some server error.

[DavenUK]

Have a look here - worth thinking about ;-)

Cheers

Dave

[fishface]

Nice products Dave if you can afford them.
My homemade one cost £16 for components from ebay and a Sunday afternoon in labour.

[mondo50m]

Fishface, How about a list of the parts and where they are on EBAY. I would like to build a pin table, but am wondering about what to use for the pins.

Milt

[fishface]

Here is a link to a photo of the table that I made (I couldn't manage to upload it here, even though I reduced the resolution):pinbed.jpg photo by ebayshmebay | Photobucket

The pins are M3 set screws, 12mm long fed up from the bottom with a nut on top of the table to keep them in place, then there are dome nuts right on top to support the work. Dome nuts provide a small contact area, but are not sharp.

Underneath the table are 2 plywood laser cut Y pieces (each made from 3 smaller pieces because I needed them to be larger than my cutting area!). The bottom one just locates and supports the three threaded rods that form the legs. The top one is attached to the table and contains a captive nut so turning the threaded rod winds the top of the table up and down.

[mondo50m]

Nice way that you did that. May have to give it a try.

Thank You
Milt