On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:19:35 -0000, Joe wrote:

I shopped out getting my wood stock inventory cut by waterjet and laser.
I found more than a few shops than can do it, but it was not yet cost
effective for me. Waterjet seemed to be a better fit for the type of
cutting I need or at least more waterjet shops were cutting wood than
laser shops.(small laser shops were usually cutting metal) If I ever get
to ramp up production I would definitely consider laser or waterjet to
prep materials. Many marquetry shops use both machine and hand. Laser/
waterjet to cut repeated patterns which are hand inlayed into the backing
board along with hand cut pieces for natural variations desired. When
prep cutting thousands of the same geometric pieces you really want to
get to the installation part of the job. There's more going on than just
prep cutting to achieve the end result.

If you're looking to get into it yourself, I'd suggest waterjet-
provided it won't mess up your wood. While I'm fairly comfortable
with the idea of etching wood with the laser, cutting parts is another
matter. The actual cutting is fine, especially if done with nitrogen
as an assist gas- but the problem is in dust collection.

Without a dust collector, cutting wood with the laser smokes a lot.
With a collector that is strong enough to be effective, there's a good
chance that it will suck the smaller bits into it. I wouldn't have
thought that that was much of an issue *until* I had the misfortune of
having the dust collector at work catching fire on me. It wasn't
mine, or anyone else's fault- but it was a horrendous mess and a lot
of thick smoke to deal with. And, we cut metal- not wood. If a laser
cutter can set aluminum and steel dust on fire to make a little
impromptu thermite 20 yards from the actual cutting area, I would
imagine that a collector full of charcoal and bits of wood would be
even more likely to go up in smoke.

If someone really cares about not using technology they should be
planting seeds and growing their own trees and never be using any power
tools anywhere along the way.