Hello all! I'm new here, and recently purchased a new Trotec 80W C02 Speedy 400. So far, the machine is great! However, I am trying to determine a repeatable way to setup laser cutting a bunch of small parts of mirror backed clear acrylic with clean edges. I have been successful with some small runs (4"x4" sheets), but I noticed some warping of the <=.125" thick material the more pieces I cut out of a single blank. I would like to increase the initial blank size to about 12"x12" and I have been told that lifting the part off of the tooling plate helps to keep the edges "clear" or clean." However, I think that if I used something like a multimat to hold the entire piece down when cutting, I could get the best yield with minimal warping. The only problem is, the multimat would be directly behind the acrylic and I am afraid of not getting clean edges.
So, before I purchase a multimat, or make a jig to hold the material as flat as possible to "float" above the table, I was wondering if any of you have some advice. I will be cutting these sheets all of the time, with thousands of parts coming off of the machine.
Thank you in advance, and I'm glad to finally post something!