A few weeks ago I put up some plans for a balsa wood model airplane.  Today I made a stab at cutting it out.  The wings cut out great, I was able to easily mark the flap details and cut through the 1/16" wood in one pass at 80% power and 150 mm/min speed.

I also picked up a piece of 1/4" balsa wood for the body. This is a particularly solid piece of wood and I was only just able to cut through it at 50 mm/min at 80% power and 3 passes.  This was so painfully slow that I did not end up finishing the cut (actually lightburn goofed up and lost its position... a tail for another day).

Finally I have a piece of 1/8" balsa wood that I also tried to use to make a body out of.  This is a particularly pithy piece of wood, I could easily snap it without effort.  No matter how fast I cut the wood would tend to catch on fire and burn out of control. I tried using extra air to keep the flames at bay but that only seemed to make it worse.  I ended up trying to cut the piece out at 200 mm/min, 80% power and 2 passes.  However the cut was a mess, with large portions of it either uncut or burnt excessively.

I need to get a new piece of 1/8" wood and this time I will pick the most dense piece I can find. Maybe that will cut better.

My plans have a small flaw in them, the slot for the wing in the main body is 4 mm to short.  I will try to correct the plans once the plane is finally put together.