Our supply: Stock material
Thickness: Available in 0.4mm, 0.8mm, 1.5mm
Sheet sizes: 1200×1200mm, 1200×600mm, 600x 600mm
Your supply: Not all plywood can be laser cut. Make sure your plywood is interior grade with an MR glue line. Get in touch to find out more.
For thicker sheet sizes from 3mm – 15mm see BB (II/II) Russian Birch Plywood»
See more on laser cutting wood»
See more on laser engraving wood»
A high strength laminated sheet material made from Birch timber PEFC certified. Both faces are grade BR BR: – Boil Resistant. Commonly used wood material for laser cutting and engraving. The plywood is bonded with phenol glue line.
Art & sculpture, Jewellery, signage, model making, light construction work, furniture and cabinet making, retail display.
As a natural material, please be aware the tone and grain line can vary from sheet to sheet. Thinner sheets can also be prone to warping. All sheets are laser cut and engraved with a horizontal grain line (left to right.)
As a natural material burn marks are caused during the cutting process that are minimised using the following standardised cutting methods.
Compressed air (usually 4 bar of pressure is used to prevent flaming, scorching and charring on the top surface. In some cases a subtle discolouration can occur around the surrounding area of the cut line. This is barely noticeable on thin plywood but can be easily sanded off with a fine grit wet and dry paper if an issue.
Very small flares can occur on the surface where the laser fires at the beginning of the path of a vector line / shape. These marks can be easily sanded off with a fine grit wet and dry paper.
As standard, the bottom surface is masked with protective tape to minimise burn marks causes when the laser meets the laser bed.
The average cutting kerf (how much the laser takes away) is + / – 0.1mm
As a benchmark, we recommend that minimum cut widths be no smaller than the corresponding thickness of the material. See more on min cut widths and kerf of the laser.
Birch plywood laser cuts with brown / black edge which is darker the thicker the plywood being cut. The edge can get dirty and in some cases mark if in contact with the material surface.
As a natural material, wood knots and other imperfection are sometimes occurrent within the plywood. They are slightly harder than the plywood layers which can have an effect on the clarity of laser cutting. When the laser meets these knots, it can cause the laser to flair up slightly.
We have established optimised engraving settings for all our own supply materials. For birch plywood the marking is a shallow light surface scratching. 0.4mm and 0.8mm plywood engraves with an excellent clarity in a black / brown tone.
As a standard with all wood materials we engrave with the grain line horizontal (left to right) to ensure the best clarity. If you would prefer to engrave against the grain, you’ll need to specify this in your job request.
Please be aware that as a natural material, a slight variation in the tone of the engraved finish can occur from sheet to sheet from the same standard engrave settings. Tone of wood, grain line and density and moisture content all have an impact on the engraving tone. Variation in tone can also effected by power distribution if you have lots of pieces of artwork to engrave that vary in size.
If you would like your engraving to be deeper than our standard settings, you will need to specify this in your job request. Be aware that the the higher laser power and slower processing speeds required can cause more black dusty marks to be released that can mark the surface. The laser machine extraction can also pulls these dusty marks over the top surface creating a scorched edge appearance to the engraving that is stronger the deeper it is. Some people like this effect but be aware if you want to keep a clean result, it’s best to stick with our optimised settings.