First up the results of my attempts to cut a mitre joint with a laser cutter. My jig worked pretty well but it was very time consuming to get the part on the jig correctly and to align the laser to where I wanted the cut to be. The biggest problem is that the 'red dot' is only really a rough guide for where the laser will cut and it isn't actually in the same place. It is good enough to spot whether the job fits the material when you press 'test' but not really up for fine alignment.

The resulting joint line isn't too bad but I suspect not up to job of hiding a corner completely. I'll try it with again with a couple of the parts which have bricks engraved on them and see how that looks.

Next we have a demonstration of what happens when you get the power to high! It didn't look too bad as it was cutting....

However turning it over demonstrates the problem!

you can see that the brick engrave lines almost went all the way through, oops. Might be good for modelling the WDLR though!

Finally how it is meant to be done. Now to just write down those settings for the different cuts. If anything I could probably reduce the power of the engrave lines still further. Currently I get a depth of about 1mm in the 3mm MDF.

Still it is all an interesting learning curve and with the size of the things I'm cutting 3mm MDF isn't exactly the most expensive material to waste.

David