Laser Cutting

(Image above shows the two Laserscript laser cutters, with their filter and water cooler units. On the wall in the background is the range of materials available. On the surrounding benches, some of our 3D printers and the Roland CNC mini-milling machine.)

Training for Undergraduate Users

Laser cutter training must be completed for access to be granted. 

Please firstly review the training document (it will download to your downloads folder) and then contact the Dyson Helpdesk to arrange a training session. Once this is complete review and sign the risk assessment and email it to the Dyson helpdesk quoting the name of the trainer and the completion date.

The Dyson Helpdesk email address is dyson-helpdesk@eng.cam.ac.uk .

Paying for your laser cutting

Please see the materials page to learn how to pay.

Non-Undergraduate Users

On some occasions, depending on Staff and machine availability, we are may be able to offer machine use to others (i.e. Staff and Researchers in the Engineering Department, though the priority remains our Undergraduate users), but this is by no means guaranteed! In a number of situations an additional usage charge of £43.50 per hour of cutting will apply.

Given the circa 3000 people who work and study in the Engineering Department and that we only have two laser cutting machines and two members of staff who work with these machines, we are not normally able to extend any offer of use to those from other Departments.

Materials

It is important to appreciate that only certain materials can be safely cut on the laser cutter. Safe in this sense means ones where the smoke and fumes can be safely handled by the laser cutter's filtering system. Cutting the wrong type of plastic can release dangerous and harmful gases, as such we control tightly what can be cut on our machines - and therefore we tend to only let you cut materials which we have supplied to you.

The Dyson Centre holds a stock of laser-safe plywood and MDF sheets in 3, 4 and 6mm, Bamboo sheet in 3mm and Rubber sheets in 2.3mm. We do not cut these materials in thicker sizes due to a higher risk of fire.

The Dyson Centre's plastic supplier provides a wide variety of acrylics/perspex including a choice of glitter acrylic, tinted acrylic, mirror acrylic, frosted acrylic, florescent acrylic and also 24 different solid coloured acrylics which are all available to order. A selection of the most popular colours are kept in stock, please ask us if you would like to see the current stock

Price list below (all materials listed are plastics, apart from laser-safe "Plywood" and laser safe "MDF" wood.)

Please note: We aim to keep this pricing as current as possible but due to where the materials are produced, primarily Russia, the market is very unpredictable whilst suppliers are sourcing alternatives and this gets reflected in the prices we buy materials in for.

Download this chart: (PDF)(PNG)

DRP39, Feb 2024