Laser cutter question

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Hi :wave: @lasertechs

I am wondering if I can screen print some of the plywood available in the laser shop and then laser cut after? The screen printing ink is essentially made up of systemA3 acrylic and systemA3 screen printing acrylic medium. Both are water soluble… images below of the labels… maybe a tricky question but interested to know your thoughts!

Not a laser tech, but I’m interested in finding out how you’ll be aligning the print with the cut. I never dared cutting a printed sheet because it would inevitably cut crooked.

I want to print an abstract design so alignment is not really an issue. That being said I am sure there is a way to create some sort of registration marks on the print, and do some prep between the print and laser files in illustrator beforehand.

Print some diagnostic marks outside of your Final Cut area to use with alignment. For example if you want to cut a 250x250 square with stuff in it, draw a 255x255 box around it, set your file in ruby to be 255x255, and align accordingly. That’s how I got the cards to cut nicely in this project: Board Game - Train Game

From this file here, notice the alignment ticks:

Makerspaces’ Speedy 300 doesn’t have the camera, but you can get a camera to do this, you print 6mm black circles outside the design and use them to align.

Heres a demo on the Speedy 400 with Ruby Inside we bought for work a few years back:
https://youtu.be/sC6OKNFCF0M