The bench cards.
Five cards that earn their tape: print the page, cut on the dashes. The print skips the chrome.
💦 The drying card — cut it out, tape it to the dryer
| PLA | 50 °C · 8 h | PETG | 65 °C · 8 h |
| ABS | 80 °C · 8 h | TPU | 70 °C · 8 h |
| PC | 80 °C · 8 h | PA (nylon) | 80 °C · 8 h (check the label!) |
| PCL (pen) | NEVER oven-dried — softens near 60 °C | ||
Bag it with desiccant while it's warm, or print it now. — the app's Materials.kt (Bambu Lab's guide figures)
⛔ The never-cut card — what never goes under a diode laser
| PVC · vinyl · artificial leather | chlorine — eats the machine and the maker |
| polycarbonate | fire, and stops cutting past ≈1 mm |
| ABS | melt + cyanide fumes |
| HDPE | melt, catches fire |
| polystyrene / polypropylene foam | fire |
| fiberglass · G10 · FR4 · coated carbon fiber | resin fumes |
| not listed ≠ safe: check the material's safety data sheet | |
Tulane · Georgia Tech · FIXME · Waag fablab lists, as the app's MaterialSafetyTest carries them
📐 The kerf card — the measure and the one rule
| the measure | cut 10 squares of S; push together; measure M → K = S − M/10 |
| the app's example | 10 × 20 mm → 198.4 mm = K 0.16 mm |
| the LightBurn offset | K/2 — outward on outer shapes, inward on holes |
| the fit gauge | 10 slots from T−0.25 to T+0.20 in 0.05 steps, cut offset-OFF |
| the clearance | c = the slot that fit + K − T · zero = a press fit |
Run it live: fabricationbench.com/tools.html#kerf
🔥 The energy card — the one number for fire
| the rule | E = W · (p/100) · N / v — watts × power × passes ÷ speed (mm/s) |
| the caution | 1 J/mm+ = the fire caution shows (no source publishes a threshold) |
| why the regimes sit apart | a 10 W diode at 5 mm/s = 2 J/mm (cuts); 250 mm/s = 0.01 J/mm (engraves) |
| the words to remember | slow + powerful = the likeliest to catch fire |
Thunder Laser · Trotec · Stanford EH&S, as the app's SettingChecksTest cites
🧾 The quote card — the estimator's equations
| cut time | Σ length · passes ÷ speed + shapes · move-per-shape |
| raster time | lines · (width + 2·overscan) ÷ speed — doubled on one-way |
| material | sheet price × the bounding box's share × waste factor |
| calibration | estimate ÷ real, per machine — the first real job sets it (525 → 600 s = ×1.143) |
Run it live: fabricationbench.com/tools.html#quote — the 2×/4× price thumb = Etsy's rule of thumb