Laser cutting for modding – practical suggestions.

  It is much more difficult in practice. Machine has capricious adjustment and lots of controls. The quality of cutting mostly depends from experience and knowledge of operator but not from depreciation. Quality in my understanding is plane edge, without steps, burnt spots and buildup of melt. On an old machine you can’t obtain precision, so you can't observe component size. It might sound strange but we don't need precision in machine tool operators' understanding.
  A new machine is in one hundredth error and old is “only” in ten hundredths. And that’s not a problem for modding.
 

  Contours and form of cutting can be limited only by your imagination. Real difficulties can occur if you make thin straps (verify details at your operator), you can’t make them less then certain width, which is defined from material width and properties. To order laser cutting you need only cash, file with AutoCAD or CorelDraw image and a machine for laser cutting in your city. You need laser cutting if you need to do difficult patterns or for small-lot order. You don't need to do edging after cutting if the machine is good. If the laser is old or if there is non-experienced operator the edge would have buildups of melt, laser machine operators call this process “hail shower". Before making an order you should ask about it. It’s very difficult to scrape laser hail. It's easier to pickle it and it's better to find experienced operator beforehand, though it would cost more. I worked a lot with lasers and I can say shat hail can only appear when the work is done by inexperienced operator, on a very old machine or when the work is done in a rush, the last is the most common variant… Don’t forget to show the master where the face side of a component is and sign it with a pencil.