Here’s my first run of ~3/16" thick coasters made from koa. I’ve got a lot to learn and really need to employ finish passes to improve the cut quality. Pretty happy that the owner wants to sell these at his shop though.
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Very cool idea and nice choice of wood keep it coming 
Not sure if you did but it looks like you may have done your finishing passes at the same depth as your cutting passes? If so you can speed up the cutting a lot and clean up the edges a lot by doing a fast and deep finishing pass at full depth. As you’re only taking a tiny amount the machine’s quite happy going the full depth of your cutting edge on the bits.
I pretty much always do this on my cuts and it adds only a small bit of time as it’s just a single pass on all the edges and you can be fairly aggressive on your feedrates.
Good luck, the coasters look really nice.
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I actually did not do any finish passes, this was only roughing passes. So I bet if I do a finish pass and use your advice theyll come out great.
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Cool!
Also, what’s a record?
…kidding…
It’s what you had at home, what you made mix tapes from to give your sweetie. Or had copies on 8-Track to take in your sweet ride. Of course, the real audiophiles all had reel-to-reel for their music. They were the true proto-hipsters…
Always keep improving! But don’t let the little things take your focus away from the big picture. Sometimes the only thing those little flaws mean to somebody is that it’s proof the thing wasn’t made in China.
“Everything, including your set of hand-blown green glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous aboriginal people of wherever”
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- “Mistakes” give an item character
- Robotic perfection, but soulless
- Robotic reproduction in the style of hand-made variation … ?
Once I saw some shirts at the store that were of a “distressed” style with patches missing and worn-looking threads hanging off, and I noticed the detail of the wear pattern was extremely similar from one item to the next. Obvious in retrospect that they wouldn’t leave the “distressed” pattern to chance, but at the time it really threw me.
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I think I was leaning more toward the “people like to support small local business when they can afford to” angle.
If something is TOO perfect, then you’ll have to do some more work to show its just you so people won’t think you’re just importing and reselling.
Funny you should mention distressing, though. I remember a similar realization.
I throw away blue jeans that looked like that👁
Now you can go laser cut some labels and resell them. Genuine distressed by local merchant. Years of hard work into every pair.
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Robotic reproduction in the style of hand-made variation … ?
And ironically we are all using a CNC 
Forgot to post this
I’ll be back, I have some testing to do…
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Started a new project, will take about 2hrs for this piece. Can already tell the massive difference in cut wall quality with using a finish pass, I just lightly sanded the face to clean up the top.
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I don’t have a record player, but I do have some coasters made out of records. They just cut the part with the label out.
I really want to try cutting some junk records with the laser when I get it set up
Have good ventilation you can get some very bad things from plastics 
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I’ll make sure to have my roll up garage door open and probably use an air mover I use for work.
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My laser is in the living room. I have to be more careful than most in that respect but i have only done wood and cloth. And leather and bone only once not a good smell to go with dinner 
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