For reasons not relevant here, Mary asked for a bunch of small cloth wipes cut to a particular size. A few minutes with LightBurn for rectangle-drawing and array-fiddling produces a useful result:
The part about peeling away what you don’t want just never gets old:
It turns out this is even faster than rotary cutter action, because you need not worry about the old T-shirt sliding around while you’re slashing away at it. Bonus: a free 2 mm radius on all the corners!
Let the pieces air out for a day on the patio and they’re ready for use.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
6 responses to “Laser-Cut Specialty Wipes”
Can you use this technique to cut out fabric for quilting?
I’ve been working up to that, trying to get all the details right. Mary has some intricate curved piecing coming up and I want to run alongside her to compare results.
Key downside: the smell of charred fabric is off-putting.
Does it go away after a wash?
Entirely, but then the cut pieces wrinkle / roll up and are impossible to flatten without wrecking the precise layout needed for quilting: ironing does not help. Quilters are fussy about such things. :grin:
I bet cutting them under dry nitrogen would take care of that! :)
Surprisingly, from what I’ve read, the decomposing organic material liberates enough oxygen to burn / char itself, even in an inert gas stream. I have no idea if that’s true, but it certainly sounds plausible.