Interior vs. Exterior Grade Plywood
In addition to stocking a large range of laser safe materials to our clients we also laser cut materials supplied to us by clients. When it comes to laser cutting plywoods we have one hard and fast rule – interior plywood only.
Our Co2 laser cutters are unable to successfully cut through exterior grade, marine grade or structural grade plywood. Here at The Laser Co we only cut interior grade plywood (which is sometimes labeled as non structural). We are able to CNC route some exterior plywoods, drop us an e-mail if you require this for your project.
Interior plywood is definitely harder to come by than exterior, and often only available in large quantities from specialist suppliers – the timber you buy at Bunnings for example, is almost definitely exterior grade. Clients often tell us that they have requested interior grade plywood and have unknowingly been sold exterior grade stock.
Plywood is constructed of multiple thin layers of timber glued together as visible from the edge of any plywood. Here’s a quick way to tell the difference between interior and exterior grade stock so that you can feel confident in your purchase.
Look at the edge of your plywood to see what colour the ‘glue lines’ between each layer of ply are:
Exterior grade plywood has black / dark glue lines.
Interior grade plywood has clear / invisible glue lines.
We advise you to check your plywood stock before purchasing it so that you can feel confident that your interior plywood purchase is just that.
