paper thicknesses

[Ian Malings]

i have a customer who wants me to suggest a proper paper thickness to them for something they want me to laser cut, and also score for folding.
i need to suggest a paper stock thick enough that will allow me to score as well as cut with my laser

can anyone suggest a good thickness?

much thanks,
ian

[Allan Wright]

Why not perforate where you want the fold?

[Ian Malings]

not a bad idea- i'll suggest it, but i don't think for this application they will want that.

any idea on what thickness to use?

[Joe Pelonio]

Do you have a vacuum table?

If not I'd pass on the job, cutting will be a nightmare as the exhaust fan blows it all over the place as it's cutting. I pretty much stick to paper the thickness of business cards or greater.

[Dave Jones]

I do a lot of cutting of 60 lb cover stock. It's thinner than index card stock but much thicker than normal copy paper. Scoring is very difficult. It's a really delicate palance of power. Too little and you have no effect. Too much and the paper breaks when you fold it. I've thought of trying several overlaping low power vectors to see if I can get a score that is a bit wider and has various power levels leading toward the actual fold line.

Remember that a "real" score line is done with pressure and doesn't remove any paper. It only compresses it to make the fold easier. It's also usually done with a rounded edge on the die, so the score has some width to it that tapers down towards the center.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Ian,

Scoring paper is not that difficult to do this customer and several others do it day after day.

They use 60 to 100 pound cover stock cut and score.

http://www.geomancycards.com/

[Dave Jones]

Mike do you know the settings they use? It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like the folds are dashed cut lines, not true scores (ie: not going through the paper).

[Mike Mackenzie]

On some of the files they are only scoring others are dashed going through the paper they use a combination of both on several of there designs.

As for the settings there is really no way to use the exact settings of these systems as to another one. It would just be something that would need to be dialed in and then saved.

We actually requested and received laser tubes that were within 1-2 watts of output power so that all of there systems could use the same settings.

This company has been running multiple systems for years and has produced 1000's of these cards the method has been the same from the first day they were installed.

[Dave Jones]

I know the settings wouldn't directly relate, but I was just trying to get an idea of the difference in scale between the power they used to cut through and the power they used to score. (ie: 10% of cutting power and 1/2 the ppi, or.....)

Also, their items fold the paper in both directions. Are they flipping the paper over to score the back on 1/2 the seams? I would think alignment would be too difficult for that.

[Ian Malings]

thx for the tips- we're going with 80 lb stock