The thickness-to-detail ratio rule and why it exists
A laser can cut almost any line you draw. Whether that line survives as a physical object is a different question. The line between the two is the thickness-to-detail ratio: the relationship between how thick your sheet is and how fine your smallest feature can be.
Our panels are cut from 2mm low-carbon steel (S235 or equivalent). At that thickness, the working rule is simple: any feature thinner than 3mm becomes fragile. Below that, thin lines bend, hairline slots close under their own weight, and delicate points snap during handling or mounting. The steel is still steel — but at 2mm, a 1mm line has almost nothing to hold it straight.
This is why the ratio matters more than any single number. A design that looks crisp on a screen at 4000 pixels wide has no scale. Steel does. The moment a drawing becomes a physical thing that hangs on your wall and lasts 25 years, geometry stops being decorative and starts being structural.
Design to the ratio and your work is manufacturable. Ignore it and the file will still open — it just won't survive the journey from cutting bed to wall.
Minimum hole diameter, slot width, and web thickness by gauge
Here are the concrete limits we design to on 2mm steel. Treat these as floors, not targets — the further above them you stay, the cleaner the result.
- Minimum line and web thickness: 3mm. This is the thinnest solid connecting element that holds its shape. Anything below flexes.
- Minimum hole diameter: a fiber laser cuts with ~0.05–0.1mm accuracy, so tiny holes are technically possible. But for a hole to read as a deliberate feature rather than a defect, keep it at or above the sheet thickness — around 2mm and up.
- Minimum slot width: keep negative-space slots at 2mm or wider so the cut edges don't fuse back together and the slot stays legible from viewing distance.
The cutting precision (0.05–0.1mm) is not the constraint. The constraint is what the steel does after it's cut — how it holds, hangs, and survives. A feature can be perfectly cut and still be too fragile to keep.
Because every panel is cut to order on a fiber laser, there's no stock inventory hiding weak geometry. What you design is what leaves the bed, 2–3 working days after the invoice is paid.
Avoiding fragile bridges and unsupported cutouts
A metal panel is one continuous piece. This is the single rule that surprises designers most: every detail must be physically connected to the whole. There are no floating islands in steel. If a shape is surrounded entirely by cut-away space, it falls out of the sheet.
The answer is bridges — small connecting tabs that hold interior shapes in place. Think of the centre of a letter O, or the eye of a silhouette. Without a bridge, the inner shape drops away. With a bridge that's too thin, it snaps.
Two failures to design around:
- Fragile bridges: a bridge under 3mm may cut fine but break during powder coating, packing, or hanging. Give load-bearing bridges room.
- Unsupported cutouts: long, thin peninsulas of steel connected at only one end act like springs. They vibrate, bend, and catch on things. Anchor delicate elements at more than one point where the design allows.
We handle bridging algorithmically as part of the pipeline — but the strongest results come from designs that already respect connectivity, so the bridges can sit where they least disturb the image.
Corner radii, sharp points, and heat accumulation
The laser cuts by melting a narrow path through the steel. Where the beam changes direction sharply or lingers, heat accumulates. Two consequences for fine detail:
- Sharp interior corners: a truly perfect right-angle interior corner concentrates stress and heat. A small radius — even a fraction of a millimetre — relieves both and keeps the corner clean.
- Fine points and spikes: a needle-thin point is where heat has nowhere to escape. The tip can round over, discolour, or burn back. Blunt sharp spikes slightly, or thicken them toward the base.
These are small compromises, invisible at viewing distance, and they are the difference between an edge that looks intentional and one that looks scorched. Remember too that finishes are applied without primer — a primer coat would flood any detail under 5mm and blur the drawing entirely. The cut edge you design is the edge you see.
Preparing DXF/vector files for reliable results
Clean geometry in, clean steel out. A few file principles carry most of the reliability:
- Closed paths only. Every cut line must form a closed contour. Open paths and stray endpoints confuse the cut order.
- No overlapping or duplicate lines. Doubled paths tell the laser to cut the same line twice — wasted heat and burnt edges.
- Convert strokes to outlines. A 1px stroke has no real width. Give every line an actual thickness in the geometry, respecting the 3mm minimum.
- Vector, not raster. A fiber laser follows paths, not pixels. Export as clean vector (DXF preferred) with real-world dimensions set, not arbitrary canvas units.
- Check scale. Set the size before you send. A design at 60cm and the same design at 6cm have entirely different minimum-feature realities.
Design within these limits and steel will hold what you drew — not for a season, but for decades. That is the whole point of putting a story into 2mm steel instead of pixels: it stays.
