Thread: Wood for laser cutting in Sydney

Most wood or wood-like products that I have seen used for laser cutting are either ply wood or High Moisture Resistant MDF (HMRMDF). Hoop pine plywood would be made in Australia (Hoop pine is a native tree) and should not be subject to fumigation as it is not imported or drenched in other interesting chemicals used elsewhere to bleach or otherwise 'improve' the veneers. The glues used (in Oz) in ply are Resourcinol 9sp?) or Urea-Formaldehyde or Melamine - all contain toxic ingredients when they start but are not toxic when cured.

Another possible processed wood product that you might consider is good old-fashioned Masonite, aka 'hardboard' - it is made by simply pressing wood fibres with heat until part of the wood breaks down and sticks the rest together like toffee (its a sugar that breaks down). No glue at all. I believe most MDF's (in Oz) are made with a similar process - MDF is really just cardboard with pretensions, but the HMR stuff has extra binders, so it is suck resistant but you might want to check with the manufacturer about what binders they use in their product.

As for the cost of 200-300mm solid wood being particularly expensive, that is the premium part of the log when processed - there are only a couple of slices that will come out that wide, most of the rest will be cut to 75-90mm wide. Then for 10mm thick you would be lucky to get two pieces 10mm thick out of a single board - if you are a bit careful you should get a 10mm and a 5-6mm plank (again, the logging mill will cut the log into 25mm slices, less the thickness of the blade which is easily another 3mm) and to get that they would need a specialist bandsaw and blades together with an experienced operator - most places would just run the 20mm plank through a thicknesser and turn the extra into shavings, and that would take 4-5 passes before they do a finishing cut - again, operator and machine costs plus you get to pay for the 20mm plank and disposing of the sawdust.

If you are going to do a LOT of this sort of work, you may find it more economical in the long run to buy a 14" bandsaw with good resaw capacity (Jet make a couple and Laguna also have some that are suitable - both now have Australian agents) and some re-saw blades from Henry Brothers. Again, a basic thicknesser will smooth out those saw marks and leave you with boards of a constant thickness. I think about $2000 should cover the extra machinery, - labour and training coats are up to you. If you are willing to make lots of sawdust, then a beefier thicknesser such as the Carbatec CT-330X that will do the job will set you back less than $800 even with a spare set of blades.

Originally Posted by Budgi

I'm looking for a supplier who can provide wood for laser cutting located in Sydney or Newcastle.

Ideally what I'm looking is as follows:

- Depths between 5mm - 10mm
- Width between 200mm - 300mm
- a harder soft wood (hoop pine is ideal) or a soft medium density wood. Something soft enough to cut through but something with a good grain structure so it doesn't fall apart.
- No plys / MDF / balsa (this will be for young kids and they may suck on it, so I want to keep away from anything that could possibly be toxic).

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm not having much luck and anything I do find is extortion.

Hi Budgi

Can we get you to define extortion?

a 200-300mm x 5-10mm board will have started life as something around 25mm thick, or possibly even thicker
with care you can probably recover three 6mm boards from a 25mm rough sawn board -- however, it would be more likely that you would only recover two 9-10mm boards
The time spent converting the thick board into two or three thinner ones needs to be recovered in the asking price for the thinner boards

Of course it's quicker (and therefore cheaper in terms of time) to convert the 25mm sawn into 10mm finished by sending 5/8 ths of the wood up the pipe as chips -- but that level of wastage offends me.

as Malcolm Fraser reminded everyone 30+ years ago, there's "no such thing as a free lunch"


If you can give the forum an idea of the quantities you're after, perhaps someone will offer to help.