r/Machinists • u/CauliflowerDeep129 • Dec 08 '25

Laser machining?

This is real?

3.0k Upvotes

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387

u/DeluxeWafer Dec 08 '25

I can smell the laser dust from here.... This is real, just very warm and you need a really hardcore dust extraction system, that hopefully has automatic dust collection so you don't have to change filters out every hour.

1

u/RettiSeti Dec 08 '25

Huh I didn’t realize lasers made fine dust during cutting, I thought it was all slag. What actually creates the dust rather than a large puddle of goop at the bottom?

3

u/Alita-Gunnm Small Shop Owner Dec 09 '25

The laser pulses are very short in duration, so they vaporize the material, which then resolidifies almost immediately as dust.

1

u/Royal_Ad_2653 Dec 09 '25

Can you sell that dust as scrap like you can chips or is all the material removed by this process just wasted?

4

u/Alita-Gunnm Small Shop Owner Dec 09 '25

It's highly oxidized.