Can the Laser Upgrade kit cut Poster Board and Thick Card Stock?
Why yes! We have been getting this question lately by a few people who have interesting projects lined up if it can cut well. So we decided to go out and buy some poster board and card stock (and even a hanging file folder) to see how well it would cut with various brands, colors, and thicknesses. It turns out that it works pretty good. It can cut card stock and folders real fast and can cut everything else with one pass. The shiny white poster board cuts better with the shiny white side down. And color doesn’t make a big difference, black is just a bit harder to cut but not that bad. So here is the run down on the competitors.
The Competition:
1. Office Depot Card Stock Paper 110lb
2. Walgreen’s Crayola White Poster Board
3. Dollar Tree White Poster Board
4. PendaFlex Hanging File Folder Grey
5. Dollar Tree Pink Poster Board
6. Walgreen’s Black Poster Board
The Results:
So we set the laser to 1amp, which should give around 1 – 1.1W of output power. We really like to run the laser at this level so it does not heat up too much and reduce its lifetime. The results were pretty good. The card stock cut great with very little effort and the poster board all cut with one pass. The white cut better on the non shiny side. All of the cuts had a good quality with only a little ash left on the edge of the paper, but some so faint you couldn’t tell. Here are the numbers.
1. Office Depot Card Stock Paper 110lb – 200 mm/min 1 pass
2. Walgreen’s Crayola White Poster Board- 100 mm/min 1 pass
3. Dollar Tree White Poster Board – 125 mm/min 1 pass
4. PendaFlex Hanging File Folder Grey – 150 mm/min 1 pass
5. Dollar Tree Pink Poster Board – 125 mm/min 1 pass
6. Walgreen’s Black Poster Board – 100 mm/min 1 pass
Here are some shots from under the microscope to show the edges. There is a little char, but the cut quality is better than the manufacturer of the paper. You can see the laser cut edge on the bottom and the manufacturer on the left. The manufacturer has a “ruffled” look to it while the laser is straight. Here is the card stock photo:
And here is the file folder edge under the microscope:
All in all a very good test. Now let’s go and cut some cool designs in poster board and card stock!
Check out the video here:
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