Engraving Cast Acrylic, dust and smoke

[matthew knott]

When i engrave clear cast acrylic i find a get a white dust like area around the engraving area, most of it cleans off but some is rally tricky and i use a bit of polish, any tips on avoiding this as i want to avoid cleaning and polishing, turning the power down helps as i get less dust but obviously that has it limits.
Thanks and happy new year guys

[Kev Williams]

Whenever you burn something you get ash- that's what you're dealing with. Plastic ash is sticky and gooey, so you're going to need to polish, regardless

Not sure what you're using, I use either Novus #1 plastic clean & shine, or some Kleenmaster Brillianize-- both are plastic polish, I have a bunch of both here and they're pretty much the same. Spray it on and buff it off BEFORE you laser, makes the plex slick as snot and the ash comes off much easier. And the ash that doesn't come off (there's always some) usually comes off with more polish. Stubborn ash should come off with denatured alcohol.

[Larry Bratton]

You could mask it. Cast usually comes with a paper mask on it. If your engraving isn't too detailed and you want to go to this trouble, kiss cut around the numbers, letters or design. Then weed out the cut mask, put the piece back in place and raster. Some people mask with transfer tape, then raster engrave through the mask. I don't particularly like doing that, so I do the former. I also use this procedure for paint filling mask.