Reminder! Keep A Close Eye On The Laser!

[Chuck Stone]

yeah.. the Montreal Protocol banned all that stuff. There's a replacement
for 1211 called Halotron, but it doesn't work as well. The military still
uses halon, though. And some airlines still use it. Halon 1211 can be
reclaimed so it isn't totally gone, but new manufacture is banned. The
main reason for using it is that it is covalently bonded (shared valence
electrons) so it is non conductive. Won't fry your laser if you discharge
it on the main board. And you won't spend weeks trying to clean white
or purple powder out of the chip sockets

[Rodne Gold]

if you use enough air assist , you should have no flare ups - the air jet should dissipate the flammable gasses etc and be strong enough to put the fire out. Only time I ever seen air assist be a hinderance in that respect was where I was cutting 6mm marine ply and it started smouldering and the air assist acted as a great "bellows"

[Joe Pelonio]

When you have a lot of cuts close together, there is a lot more air available for flareup. Try applying transfer tape to the top surface, then mist with water prior to cutting.

[Mark Ross]

We cut acrylic either 1/8 or 1/4 all day every day. We have the air assist cranked way up. So far in the 3 years I have been here, we've had 1 fire. When we see falre ups increasing we just replace the grid. Can't find a single thing that will clean the fragile honeycombs with any amount of sucess. When I finally get around to building the pin table for our unit, I will keep an eye on flare ups and report back whether or not we see a decrease in the number of flare ups.

[Ed Maloney]

Thanks all for your comments. Good reminder about cleaning the grid, I haven't done it in about a month and I do mostly acrylic. The air assist I have going at 30PSI which is Epilogs recommendation. Don't know if I can go over that and risk blowing something out in the machine.

[John Noell]

I cut a lot of coconut shell (burns great!) as well as acrylic and found that it helped to rearrange cutting order, separating the parts of complicated cuts. Yes, it is less efficient, but I get less burning and fewer pieces messed up. I break long complicated cuts (esp. those real close together) into separate pieces so that I get a partial cut, then the laser zips over to another place, then back to finish the first cut. This way the "dwell time" for any small area is minimized and charring/flare-ups are greatly reduced.

[Ed Maloney]

I cut a lot of coconut shell (burns great!) as well as acrylic and found that it helped to rearrange cutting order, separating the parts of complicated cuts. Yes, it is less efficient, but I get less burning and fewer pieces messed up. I break long complicated cuts (esp. those real close together) into separate pieces so that I get a partial cut, then the laser zips over to another place, then back to finish the first cut. This way the "dwell time" for any small area is minimized and charring/flare-ups are greatly reduced.

Excellent idea! Maybe less efficient, but better than having a fire or me having to stand over the laser and watch instead of doing something else.

[Trevor Watson]

Try manually holding a air gun pointing at the current cut I have done this on a few jobs where had alot of parts nested together close enough they would flare.. Air gun fixed it can be boring though ! lol .