Laser cutting material selector, wavelength, gas and edge quality compared
Set the application, the edge requirement, the laser type and the budget, and the tool ranks materials by whether the wavelength actually cuts them, what assist gas they need and how much they will darken, char or distort, not by which material sounds right.
Open the material selector A free account opens this tool. The interface is in English and nothing you enter leaves your browser.How it works
Four settings, and the ranking moves with every one of them.
Choose the application and edge requirement
A functional or structural part weighs corrosion resistance and strength heavily, a decorative sign or object weighs cosmetics and price instead, and the same materials can rank in a completely different order depending which you pick.
Set the laser type, power class and thickness
Fiber and CO2 are not interchangeable options, they are different wavelengths that suit different materials outright, and the power class changes the maximum thickness the tool will consider achievable.
Read the ranking, the gas requirement and the red list
Every candidate shows whether it actually cuts with your chosen laser, the assist gas it needs, how much it will darken or distort, and whether it fails to reach your requested thickness, while nine materials are shown separately as never safe to cut at all.
Wavelength decides compatibility before anything else does
CO2 runs at 10.6 micrometres, fiber at roughly 1064 nanometres, almost a tenfold difference, and that gap is why some pairings are simply wrong.
Built to show the physics, not just a green tick
A material that cuts badly is worse than a material the tool honestly says it cannot cut at all.
Wavelength compatibility, not a popularity list
CO2 at 10.6 micrometres and fiber at around 1064 nanometres behave almost oppositely on the same material. Copper and brass reflect CO2 so strongly the beam can damage the machine's own optics, both are marked incompatible with CO2 regardless of power. Clear acrylic does the reverse with fiber, it simply passes the beam through instead of absorbing it, so the result is no cut at all rather than a slow one.
Assist gas shown as a real requirement, not a checkbox
Stainless steel is always marked as requiring nitrogen, because oxygen would chemically oxidise the edge. Nitrogen instead relies on mechanical pressure of at least ten bar, five to twenty times higher than the oxygen range used for steel, to blow the melt out clean. Mild steel gets oxygen by default, cheaper and faster, and only switches to nitrogen when the edge is going to be welded.
Heat affected zone turned into a distortion risk you can act on
A fiber laser leaves a heat affected zone of only 0.1 to 0.4 millimetres on steel, next to 0.5 to 2.0 millimetres for plasma and 1.0 to 5.0 millimetres for oxy-acetylene. The tool compares that zone against your sheet thickness and flags low, medium or high distortion risk, and says plainly when the rules core has no number for a combination instead of guessing one.
A red list with the chemistry behind every entry
PVC, PTFE, ABS and polycarbonate above about a millimetre never appear in the ranking, each with the actual gas or breakdown product that makes it unsafe, hydrogen chloride, hydrofluoric acid, hydrogen cyanide. Galvanised steel and fibreglass carry the same warning even though the rules core has no separate entry for them yet, the gap is stated, not hidden.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't I cut copper or brass with a CO2 laser?
Both reflect a large part of the CO2 beam instead of absorbing it, and the reflection can be strong enough to damage the machine's own optics rather than just cutting slowly. That is a real risk to the machine, not a performance trade-off, which is why copper and brass are the only materials the tool marks flatly incompatible with CO2, regardless of the machine's power.
Why does clear acrylic show as incompatible with a fiber laser?
Acrylic does not absorb the fiber wavelength around 1064 nanometres, the beam passes straight through it instead of cutting. Raising the power does not fix this cleanly, it tends to cause internal cracking or clouding rather than a usable cut. The same acrylic cuts well on CO2, because CO2's much longer wavelength is absorbed strongly by the material.
Why does stainless steel always need nitrogen?
Oxygen reacts chemically with stainless steel during cutting and leaves a dark, oxidised edge, exactly what nitrogen avoids because it is inert and relies purely on mechanical pressure to blow the melt clear. Nitrogen needs much higher pressure than the oxygen used on mild steel, at least ten bar, but the result is a clean, bright edge ready for welding without further processing, which is why the tool marks stainless as requiring nitrogen regardless of the edge quality you selected.
What is the practical difference between cast and extruded acrylic?
Cast acrylic is made by slow polymerisation between glass plates, giving it a more uniform structure, and a CO2-cut edge on it self-polishes from the laser's own heat. Extruded acrylic is cheaper and faster to produce but carries more internal stress, which can show up as a light haze along the cut edge or a greater tendency to crack under later machining. The tool marks extruded acrylic with a slightly higher distortion risk for that reason, and says plainly that the distinction comes from laser shop practice, not from a published rule.
Why do some materials show no published number instead of a maximum thickness?
Because the underlying rules core genuinely has no sourced figure for that material and laser combination, most commonly organics with either laser type, and copper or brass with fiber. The tool would rather say so than derive a number by analogy from a different material, which could be wrong in either direction.
Is the price ranking an actual quote in currency?
No. It is a relative order from 1 to 5 based on common market knowledge, steel cheapest, copper among the most expensive because of exchange-traded pricing, stainless and brass in between. There is no absolute price catalogue behind it, because a fixed currency figure for sheet material ages badly and misleads. Use it to narrow the shortlist, then get an actual quote for the thickness and quantity you need.
Other tools
Part of the EduFacturing tool set for laser cutting and sheet metal.
The rest of the tool set
A free account opens the full set: material selection, cutting quality, defect diagnosis, quoting and the rest, for laser cutting and manufacturing alike.
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