Woodpeckers 3 mm 1/8"x 12"x 24" Premium Baltic Birch Plywood, Box of 20 B/BB Birch Veneer Sheets | Perfect for Laser CNC Cutting and Wood Buring Projects -

Product cuts ok with my laser but has bows and warps. It is not nice and flat.

the sheets ate 1/4 inch thick and 12x23 1/2

I have used this plywood quite a few times for laser cutting. They have unlaserable areas in them, generally less than other wood I have purchased, but there are enough to cause problems. I think it is embedded knots that is the problem. These areas are very difficult to cut through with a laser. You can tell if the laser hits one of these spots because the smoke/deposit is black instead of brown. I have increased the power significantly over just cutting the wood and it still does not cut through whatever is inside this wood. I just made my 3rd purchase, but I don't think I will buy again unless they address the knot issue. They say it is good for laser and I would say it is not. All it takes is a small section and it causes real problems. I just ran 3 jobs all hit a bad spot and all require delicate manually cutting to save the piece. Even a sharpe knife has problems cutting through. The attached photo shows the black area where it did not cut. It took me 20 minutes to manually and carefully cut the piece free. This was only about 3/4 inch area, but that is all it takes to ruin a job. In the second photo you can see the knot and I think the extra adheasive which enters the knot during manufacturing at least that is my theory.

I got this for use with my K40 laser cutter. It works pretty well... mostly. To give some background, I had really mixed results with the Birch plywood at Home Depot - one piece would cut and then another one wouldn't. I picked up the Woodpeckers wood specifically for laser cutting because I wanted consistency. Piece-to-piece appearance is pretty consistent in the veneer, and the measurements are within 1/16" per piece.The problem I'm having (and the reason for 4 stars) is that certain spots on each piece just don't cut as well as others. For example, if I cut a straight line across a 12" span, probably 90% of the line will cut perfectly, and then there will be random spots where the laser doesn't get through. I think this is due to inconsistencies in the glue and/or pulp density throughout the board. It's relatively easy to touch up later since the uncut thickness is typically quite thin, but it's still annoying in comparison to cutting acrylic or actual hardwood. My favorite wood to cut is still 1/8" pure basswood (not plywood), which cuts much faster and more cleanly than this plywood.Also note that there is some warping in the pieces, so they won't lay flat on your bed unless you clamp them or steam press them back into flatness.Note for other K40 users: I'm using overkill settings to cut this stuff, and still getting the occasional uncut patches as noted above. 75% power @400mm/min.

The product is packaged well and is consistent, which is it's best and worst quality. It cuts cleanly on my laser cutters, but the product bows so much out of the box that most of the piece is unusable. I let the rest sit out over two weeks in my classroom in an attempt to acclimate, but that didn't do anything. I have a feeling this is the nature of all thin plywood; but for a product that bills itself as "Premium" and "Baltic Birch" I was really expecting much more.