Walnut is a beautiful and widely used wood that should enhance any CNC project. For that reason I was quite keen to see how well my 5W diode-LASER can cut through a 1.5mm sheet of it. Obviously thicker sheets are available but for small projects I find thin sheets are very useful. Besides, cutting thin sheets gives a good idea of how well we can cut thicker ones too. The sheet I used here had a water content of around 10%, according to my small meter, so the results were likely not too affected by the wood being overly dry.
So, above is a photo of my cutting test at a feed rate of 100 mm/min, which I find a sensible speed for a low-power LASER on a small CNC machine. I was quite surprised as it was much easier to cut through 1.5mm of Walnut than for the same thickness of Mahogany. In fact, it was cut cleanly through at 80% power in just a single pass. It also didn’t burn excessively or flame, which was a bonus making it easy to work with. And, as the photo below of the back shows, it cut with fairly minor cleanup work required.
