1 mm Hollow Cylinder

Hello Laser Cutting Gurus,

I’d like to make a black/opaque hollow-cylinder with the following dimensions: height = 1mm, inner diameter: 0.87mm, outer diameter = 1.1mm). Would it be possible to cut this part with acrylic?

I think the dimensions of the part satisfy the kerf requirements involving 0.01’’ beam width, but I am not sure about the possibility of “warping”. Any thoughts? I also read that the 1mm cylinder height will be subject to 10% sheet thickness tolerance. Any ideas for tighter thickness tolerance? My project does not necessarily require acrylic. Any opaque material would do.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,

minicut

This is from my experience with a Helix cutter (no the pololu service):
You could probably cut that out of 1mm thick Delrin/Acetal sheets. If you really worry about it, you could get 1/16" sheets and face them using a face mill to within 1/1000th of an inch.
Note that most lasers will have a slight “X” shape to their cutting beam, which means the edges will have a slight tilt (about a degree for the Helix I think.)
The biggest question I would have is how you pick up those little bits when you’re done. They will likely fall out from the sheet and might be hard to find in the honeycomb or debris collection tray below the cutting surface…

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in our laser cutting. Unfortunately, the scale of the parts you require are at least 10 times too small for our processes, and we don’t know where you might find a service that could make such small parts. Note that in general, if you are cutting something from 1mm material, then the part itself should not have features smaller than 1mm or you risk warping; your rings would only be 0.115mm-thick, which is much too small relative to the material thickness and just too thin for us to cut or handle reliably.

One thing to consider is to cut larger rings from shrinky dinks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinky_dink) and then bake them to shrink them down to the size you need. I have no idea whether the factors by which the shrinky dink plastic shrinks would be enough (it might vary by manufacturer), but it might be something worth looking into. If the plastic does not contain chlorine, we could try test cutting it; if you are interested, please contact us for a quote.

Good luck!

- Candice