Some materials will poison you, corrode your machine, or both. There is no safe power setting, no safe small piece, no safe single cut for anything on this list. When you can't identify a material, it belongs here too.
No. Cutting ABS releases hydrogen cyanide, and the material melts into flaming goo rather than cutting cleanly — a fire risk and a toxic one at once.
Read why →No. Polycarbonate absorbs infrared so strongly that laser machine windows are made from it — it's literally designed to stop the beam.
Read why →No — only vegetable-tanned leather is safe. Chrome-tanned leather, which is most fashion, furniture and upholstery leather, releases toxic chromium compounds when lasered, including hexavalent chromium — a known carcinogen.
Read why →No. Fibreglass releases fine glass particles and toxic resin fumes.
Read why →No. Mystery plastic, unknown coatings, galvanised or plated metal of unknown origin, 'wood' sheets with resin faces — unknown means assume unsafe.
Read why →Not safely. The steel itself is fine on a fibre laser, but the zinc galvanising vaporises into fumes that cause metal fume fever — hours of flu-like fever, chills and nausea.
Read why →No. Expanded and extruded polystyrene foam doesn't cut — it melts, shrinks away from the beam and readily catches fire, and it gives off styrene fumes as it goes.
Read why →With real caution, and often better avoided. The board core (MDF or chipboard) lasers with heavy formaldehyde smoke already; the melamine or foil laminate on top adds its own fumes, and any unknown laminate could be PVC — which is never safe.
Read why →Generally not, and never blind. Cured epoxy is a thermoset with no fixed formulation — every brand, hardener and pigment mix behaves differently under the beam, and the fumes can include carbon monoxide and other hazardous breakdown products.
Read why →