My initial stab at cutting produced more smoke than it should have and was leaving a lot of smoke marks on my cuts, along with stinking up the place.  So I decided to put some effort into cleaning things up.

I had been cutting straight on my particle board waste board and that was causing a lot of the smoke from the waste board being damaged by the laser.  I picked up a cheap cookie sheet and cooling rack from Walmart that fit perfectly together to form a raised bed with a metal base.  It allows me to raise the part off the base and provides some fire protection as well.  I used some neodymium magnets to hold paper to the cooling rack so it does not flutter around.  This cost about $9 and seems to work really well.

Next I picked up a 20"x20"x1" MERV 13 filter and a 20" box fan from Walmart to act as an air filter to suck up any smoke that is produced.  The box fan was a mess, it vibrated like mad and made a horrible noise.  After taking it appart I could see that the blade was just horribly cast, it had flashing all over it and was off balance.  A little time with a file and it is no longer making noise and is much more in balance.  Still it would be worth while spending more than $17 on a fan. 

Anyway this seems to work well, it has no trouble sucking smoke away from the cut and it seems to suppress flames at the cut as well.  It is not perfect but the smoke smell is much reduced.

Finally I picked up some 1/4" tubing and a coupler for my air compressor along with a valve to make it easy to turn the air on and off.  Then I printed a nozzle for the laser that goes around the lens and blows straight down on the cut.  This is working great! I'm running about 30 psi through it and it blows quite hard and completely suppresses any flames at the cut.

This is working well except there is a lot of air leak around the top by the lens.  I'm planning on putting a bit of silicon there to block that end up.  I'm also still trying to work out the proper nozzle size, a small hole makes a fine stream but it really restricts the air flow.  Anyway the core problem is my compressor is crazy loud and all the lost air is making it run nearly all the time.  It is something that needs more attention.

The results speak for themselves.  The small Tintin was my first cut, and the larger one is after all the modifications.  This is the bottom side of each cut but the top side looks very similar.  The larger Tintin does not even have soot on the edges.  Overall this probably cost me $60 and it has made a big difference in the cut quality and made this more safe as well.  Now to experiment with smaller and more quiet compressors.