Education · Training

Half a day on material behaviour.

Acrylic, ply, laminate, leather, coated metal, glass — and the identification habit that keeps PVC out of the machine. Bring the person who buys the stock as well as the person who cuts it.

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Half a dayAt the Riyadh showroom

Buyer and userBring both — that is the point of the session

Never PVCChlorine gas destroys the machine and harms the room

Which materials cut clean, which ones fight you, and which ones must never go in the machine at all.

This is the session that saves the consumables budget. Most wasted stock in a lab is not student error — it is the wrong material, bought because it looked identical to the right one on a supplier's website.

Never cut PVC

PVC, vinyl and anything else containing chlorine release hydrogen chloride gas under a laser. It corrodes the machine from the inside and it harms whoever is in the room. The awkward part is identification: vinyl banner offcuts, some faux leather, some folder and binder covers, and a great deal of cheap plastic sheet are PVC and none of them say so.

Polycarbonate, ABS, fibreglass, carbon fibre and any unidentified sheet stay out as well. Half of this session is teaching people how to check before a sheet reaches the bed — which is the only control that actually works in a room full of students.

What the half day covers

Acrylic

Cast versus extruded, and why one engraves frosted white while the other comes out grey and disappointing. Flame-polished edges, masking, and stress cracking after assembly.

Plywood and MDF

Grades, glue lines and voids. Why a cut stops halfway through one sheet and goes clean through the next. Laser-grade stock versus what the construction supplier will sell you.

Engraving laminates

TroLase and equivalents — layer colours, engraving depth, reverse engraving, and how to specify a sheet properly so the order arrives correct.

Leather, felt, cork and textiles

Cutting and sealing in one pass. Power and speed for natural versus synthetic, and managing the smell in an occupied room.

Paper, card and greyboard

The cheapest iteration material there is. Settings that cut cleanly without browning the edge.

Anodised and coated metals

What a CO₂ laser can genuinely mark, what it cannot, and where marking compounds fit on bare steel.

Glass, stone and ceramic

What is physically happening at the surface, why the finish varies between two apparently identical pieces, and the techniques that make it consistent.

Buying stock

How to write a material order that arrives correct, how to check a delivery, and how to identify an unknown sheet safely.

Who should come

Bring both the person who signs the purchase order and the person who runs the machine. That is the point of the session — it only pays for itself when the buyer and the user have heard the same thing, and in most institutions they never have.

Booking

Included in the quotation when you buy a Trotec laser from us for a teaching lab. Booked on its own otherwise — tell us your machine and group size and we will quote it.

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Most labs book this alongside applications training and run both across one and a half days.