Originally Posted by
Kcinnick
A few years ago I was looking into laser engravers, came really close to importing one but got cold feet with the delays and "holidays". I have imported things from all over the world, just not electronics from China.
I understand I might need two different lasers to get what I want.
I need to be able to mark anodized aluminum
I need to be able to mark steel and titanium tubes
I want to be able to mark leather, cut it if I can get clean enough cuts for finished edges. I have an arsenal of things that can cut leather, laser would just make things easier.
I don't need to cut any metals, just get a .003" thickness engraved into them, we set our cnc to .005". The problem we have with the rotary CNC is things are not made within tolerances of what we can cut, we are almost always 100% working with a finished product and I can just take it to the mill and make it flat.... A CO2 laser would be GREAT for out of spec Aluminum marking. When we are marking tubes (we have a 4 axis cnc) we usually finish them after, so we can true them up on the lathe and get great results with the CNC.
Anyway, I am adding some tools to my shop, I am taking another look at lasers, and we are probably adding wide format vinyl printing and plotting to our bag of tricks.
We do everything from print t shirts to manufacture machine guns to make leather products. Anything to make a buck.