![Pretty purple poplar plank [2395x3938 - 1.17MB]](https://pic8.co/sh/80MHN3.jpg){kind=link}
Yes it's a soft wood and will have wear and surface marring issues, but that's how soft wood goes. Laser cutting hardwoods is not really practical because of the power needed to get through even thin pieces. High power cuts that are slow will lead to lots of charring and surface burns. The grain on hardwoods also leads to inconsistent cuts since the layers have hard and soft bits which will respond differently to the laser energy. Poplar, Alder, Basswood and Balsa all do much better but they are all soft woods on the Janka hardness scale.
I was going to suggest for hardwood a water cutter then realized that the wood grain would swell unevenly from the cutter if it was dry it would absorb at different rates. I doubt it exists for the home but I bet a cutter like a sandblaster but using a stream in spray would be great for hardwood since it would polish the edges also but that likely would be a 100K setup and have expensive maintenance like tip and valve replacement. They're just learning that sound is something the ancients used to cut stone and it made so much sense though I cannot figure for the life of me how or what was used. I bet is a sound stream could be figured out to cut hardwood it would cut like butter but that is just my imagination and who knows if it would even be possible.
Waterjets have one hell of a kerf compared to a focused laser beam. My laser has between a 0.1mm and 0.8mm kerf depending on the material used. A water jet would be at least 1/8 inch on the kerf. The laser can do highly detailed and accurate cuts and engraving that no other technology can get close to. It can't do many materials, but the ones it can (like acrylic) can be extremely intricate and precise where waterjets and CNC routers can't compete.
The only reason I even thought of water was because of my friends dad when I was young. He was a plumber and told the guy to not do it, the guy put his finger over a water leak in a pipe in a nuclear sub. The pipe was under 25k psi he told me. It cut a slit in the guys finger as he moved it over the stream of water. I imagine he learned a valuable lesson since I even learned hearing the story not to assume shit in a high tech environment like a nuclear submarine.
(post is archived)