Laser cutting pewter

[Paul Phillips]

I have a client that wants to have some jewelry laser cut, not too intricate, I have no experience with pewter but I know it's relatively soft, does anyone know if it can be laser cut and if so what thickness might be possible with my 120 watts? Doing a search didn't turn up anything about cutting.
Thanks

[Mike Null]

Your New Hermes is the tool to use for that job. The laser won't do anything.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Possible but all 120 watts on Pewter will do is trash your machine and it's optics. Get to around 800 watts and thin material is possible, you need about 3kW to do real damage though.

cheers

Dave

[Paul Phillips]

Thanks Dave, that's what I thought but wasn't 100% sure!

[Kevin Gregerson]

If you want to mark it you can do so with the HPDFO. Cutting it would require at least 50-60 passes and it wouldn't look all that great. You'd almost be better off with a tile wetsaw and diamond blade.

Dave is right that you would need at least 400-500w to cut through it on Co2. A fiber is a bit more ideal for this application though.

-Kevin

[Neil Pabia]

We just did something similar but we used a waterjet to do the cutting.

[Mark Johson MN]

I've been having good luck getting through pewter sheet pretty fast, up to approx 2mm, more is possibile. Using a 30 watt fiber laser (Z-Tech). Hope that helps.

[David Somers]

Morning gang!

Just a thought. Is most pewter nowadays lead free? Might want to be sure before you vaporize it with a laser. I think it is lead free but am not certain.

Dave