Hello, I will start this off by saying I know nothing about laser or optics so this is all a wild adventure to me.
My wife wants to do highly detailed cards and things out of paper and heavy weighted paper so I suggested I put together a laser engraver after seeing a site where a guy used a laser from an old dvd-rw overpowered to cut paper.
Im not sure what power I will need but I have found THIS and though the title says 5W the description says 1W so Im not sure.
So we want a laser that is capable of cutting construction paper and maybe some vinyl so what power of laser do I need and what optics to focus it?
Or... Would I be better suited at making a knife based cutter?
I was thinking of making some pulse electronics so we could do engraving on the heavy weight paper if possible, but we couldn't on a knife based system
Thanks!