Lino safe to engrave?

[Micheal Donnellan]

I had an idea pop into my head. You can engrave wood and use it as a woodcut stamp so why not engrave lino like they use in the schools in art class. Lino is a flexible flooring material with a pattern printed on it. Not sure what you call it in US, we had to replace it in house every year or two until I put tiles down.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inapplicable/34254642/
The usual pattern I see
What is lino made of and will it kill the machine or just me?

[Bill Cunningham]

Isn't linolium flooring, the same a vinyl flooring as in Poly VINYL Cloride (PVC) I'm no chemist, but anything with "vinyl" in the name might be suspect to kill either of you..

[Richard Rumancik]

Linoleum is made from linseed oil; PVC (vinyl) flooring has replaced it in many markets. But linoleum does not contain any vinyl.

Here is one reference that tells you the general recipe:

http://www.flaxcouncil.ca/english/index.php?p=industrial3&mp=industrial

It is not obvious that it would be any more toxic than many of the other things that are routinely cut and marked. It is probably flammable but of course most of the plastics that are cut are also flammable. Not sure where you would get an MSDS for this, however.

Here's one company that laser cuts it:

http://www.telegraphic.com/plp/ml.html

[Gary Hair]

Isn't linolium flooring, the same a vinyl flooring as in Poly VINYL Cloride (PVC) I'm no chemist, but anything with "vinyl" in the name might be suspect to kill either of you..

Bill,
It's the "C" that you need to avoid. You can laser virtually anything that doesn't have Chloride or Teflon, both are toxic and will do harm to you and your machine.
I think calling linoleum "vinyl" is like calling tissue 'kleenex" - they may be synonymous but they are not exactly the same.
Always ask for an MSDS sheet for anything you are lasering and you can check for yourself exactly what is in it and what the result of burning it will be.

Gary

[Zvi Grinberg]

...
It is not obvious that it would be any more toxic than many of the other things that are routinely cut and marked. It is probably flammable but of course most of the plastics that are cut are also flammable. Not sure where you would get an MSDS for this, however.


Well, life is short anyway, so who cares?
However look what it does to our precious machine which we so dearly love.
http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l98/ZviGr/pvc.jpg

This is a result of one month of PVC cutting

Laser extracts Hydrochloric acid vapor from PVC. Imagine what it does to our lungs.



Here's one company that laser cuts it:

http://www.telegraphic.com/plp/ml.html


They must be replacing many employees down there (do they cover health care?), and they should be very rich, required to replace or repair their machines so often.

[Micheal Donnellan]

No idea if its Linoleum (linseed) or vinly based, when you buy it you just ask for lino thats what everyone calls it around here.
The damaged part looks nasty. Should be a thread made or possibly it exists someplace to show the results of what happens when you do the wrong thing.

[Larry Bratton]

I had an idea pop into my head. You can engrave wood and use it as a woodcut stamp so why not engrave lino like they use in the schools in art class. Lino is a flexible flooring material with a pattern printed on it. Not sure what you call it in US, we had to replace it in house every year or two until I put tiles down.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inapplicable/34254642/
The usual pattern I see
What is lino made of and will it kill the machine or just me?
More than likely if you had to replace it every year or two it wasn't vinyl. Vinyl flooring would have a longer life than that. However, the material in the photo looks very much like vinyl to me. I don't even know if you can purchase linoleum flooring any more..maybe so. I definitely would not process anything in my laser that has the word vinyl in it. Machine costs too much to risk ruining it and not to mention ME with chlorine fumes.

[Zvi Grinberg]

My sincere appologies to Richard Rumancik

In my recent post up this thread I gave a severe exapmle of the results of lasering PVC.

My main and genuine meaning was to warn anyone who even considers using a laser on PVC - to just stay away.

I was alerted by some comments thru the thread that gave me a flippant perception which urged me to "save the world".

However, I made a mistake by quoting Richard's post.
In the place where I live, we refer to linoleum as PVC. All linuleum I know is made of PVC.
Richard referred to another material which does not have vynil -therefore it's not PVC. I still hope it does not include chloride.

I had no personal intentions. I should not specifically quote Richard.
If someone got a different impression, here I am to clarify.

In any case, please everyone - avoid PVC on lasers!

[Richard Rumancik]

Zvi, thank you for posting this note.

It was apparent to me that you were referring to PVC in your response (while my comments referred to linoleum only) but to some readers, your comments may have implied that I was promoting the laser cutting of PVC.

Personally, I would not be reluctant to cut linoleum, but all users need to make their own decisions.

For anyone who is interested, the materials that go into linoleum (according to the website quoted) are:

- Linseed oil (from flax)
- Rosins, tapped from pine trees
- Wood flour, ground from forest timbers
- Limestone
- Natural pigment
- natural jute backing.

When I said "it is not obvious that it would be any more toxic than many of the other things that are routinely cut and marked" it was based on the fact that there was nothing in the list that stood out as either a personal risk or equipment hazard, or was different from those things that are normally cut and marked. It was an acknowledgement that MOST materials (even wood) result in the generation of by-products which are unsafe to breathe, but can be cut and marked successfully with a proper exhaust system.

Many materials do not have MSDS's available. One manufacturer of linoleum products says the company is exempt from supplying an MSDS because the material is normally a solid, and exposure does not occur during normal use. If an MSDS is unavailable, a judgment may need to be made from indirect information as to whether a material is a risk to operator or equipment.