Mechanical vs. laser pricing

[Conrad Fiore]

We are quoting the attached drawing for 300 pieces. The sample was lasered but we are quoting $5.85 each to mechanically engrave and I am curious as to how we compare to laser engraving pricing. Are we high, low or close to?

Thanks,
Conrad

[Dan Hintz]

I'd be happy doing those for about $6/piece.

[Michael Hunter]

Please let me know who your customer is!
For that price I would pay the carriage from England to the USA.

[John Noell]

Doing large numbers of the same (or similar) thing is where the laser shines. :) Even on my Mini I could do 12 at a time. One-offs can be equal between laser and rotary but batch jobs can give lasers a good edge.

[Conrad Fiore]

Interesting. So what would you expect the cost to be for the material, tape and fabrication?

[Ross Moshinsky]

To laser it, each one would cost me $1.00 in material. Engraving at 500-600dpi would be probably 3.5 minutes each. That puts 300 at about 3 full days. Since we're both in NJ, we probably have the similar expenses. As a result, I'm pretty close to your bid. I'd say about $6.00 is where we'd be. If we were located elsewhere, I'd probably be closer to $4.50-5.00

Quick question: How are you getting away with doing this job without a tool change? A tool change would probably double my time estimate....

[Michael Hunter]

Here's a very rough rule-of-thumb that I use to estimate whether my properly calculated price is reasonable :

Cost of materials multiplied by between 3 and 4 times, according to the job.

Less than 3 times and anything that goes wrong with the job kills off any potential profit.
5 times or more means that if anyone else hears about the job then they could dramatically undercut the price and the customer is lost forever.

Obviously this does not work for low quantities, works of art, specials or rush jobs.

[Martin Boekers]

Quick question: How are you getting away with doing this job without a tool change? A tool change would probably double my time estimate....


Maybe precut? A boring job, but $ are $.

I'd be curious on a job like this how fast rotary is to laser.
Not doing rotary right now I really don't have an idea.

[Conrad Fiore]

Ross,
The typestyle was not important to the customer. There was no logo matching and all they wanted was a legible font in the approximate size as per the sample. They did insist that the material and tape be as per the spec. So to answer your question about tool changes, no we used the same tool by using a single line font for the small letters and a multiple line fort for the larger. However we could have made the tool change on a multi-plate layout without adding any real time to the engraving. We timed our samples and it took just about three minutes per plate to engrave.

[Ross Moshinsky]

Conrad,

That's kind of what I figured. I just figured it would take quite a bit longer with a 5 line(I'm guessing) font. Even using a 5L font, sometimes it doesn't work out where you can use one cutter. I'm glad it worked out for you that you could use a single cutter. That saves A LOT of time. I'm assuming you're going to use a .015 or .020 cutter. In that case you probably can cut the plastic as well in one pass with the same cutter.


Maybe precut? A boring job, but $ are $.

I'd be curious on a job like this how fast rotary is to laser.
Not doing rotary right now I really don't have an idea.

Like Conrad mentioned, if you can pick and chose your font, it shouldn't take much more time to rotary. Many times it is faster. It's doing logos and things like that where the laser is 100x faster. The biggest issue with rotary can be how level the table is. Since you're only engraving .02" it's easy to find sections where the cutter won't engrave deep enough. Getting a level surface is key and there aren't a lot of easy ways to do it on a rotary engraver. Milling down 16"x24" with a 11/64" end mill would take forever. You can have the nose ride along the material, but even that isn't perfect and it can also result in surface blemishes on the material.

[Bill Cunningham]

To laser it, each one would cost me $1.00 in material. Engraving at 500-600dpi would be probably 3.5 minutes each. That puts 300 at about 3 full days. Since we're both in NJ, we probably have the similar expenses. As a result, I'm pretty close to your bid. I'd say about $6.00 is where we'd be. If we were located elsewhere, I'd probably be closer to $4.50-5.00

$6.50 each.. And would engrave them at 300 dpi.. 600 dpi is a waste of time, and you would probably make it hot enough to warp the plastic..

[Peter Odell]

I just did 410 tags like that I got 4.00 each and it took me about 15 hours to do

[Ross Moshinsky]

$6.50 each.. And would engrave them at 300 dpi.. 600 dpi is a waste of time, and you would probably make it hot enough to warp the plastic..

I engrave plastic everyday at 500-600dpi and I've never warped 1/16" material. I only warped flexibrass once and that was when I was doing a sample piece where I was engraving 90% of the cap away and didn't tape the edges down.

As for 300dpi vs 500dpi. We did our testing and we strongly believe in running just about everything at 500dpi. Even though we could save a significant amount of time we feel that 500dpi allows us to produce engraving that looks as good 1" away as it does 10" away. We arrived at this opinion fairly simply. If I rotary engraved the job, the lines would be sharp from 1" away so why shouldn't they be sharp with the laser?

[Bill Cunningham]

By moving the beam about 1/8" out of focus, you get a smoother engraving in laser plastic (Acrylic) with very few striations. I just can't see the need for that much beam overlapping on plastic.. But whatever works for you, is best for you..

[Ross Moshinsky]

It has nothing to do with the "meat" of the letter but the edges. The edges on a 300dpi engraving simply are not crisp in my opinion. On things like photos, this obviously has no impact but on text and logos, that's a whole other story.

[Dan Hintz]

It has nothing to do with the "meat" of the letter but the edges. The edges on a 300dpi engraving simply are not crisp in my opinion. On things like photos, this obviously has no impact but on text and logos, that's a whole other story.
Vectoring the edge after engraving cleans this up nicely... but choose your designs wisely. Even simple text can eat up a ton of time with that vector. I prefer to do it on large images that only need a vectoring on the outside edge, or very few inner edges.

[Martin Boekers]

As for 300dpi vs 500dpi. We did our testing and we strongly believe in running just about everything at 500dpi. Even though we could save a significant amount of time we feel that 500dpi allows us to produce engraving that looks as good 1" away as it does 10" away. We arrived at this opinion fairly simply. If I rotary engraved the job, the lines would be sharp from 1" away so why shouldn't they be sharp with the laser?

I agree, most all of what I do is at 600dpi, could I get by with less? Probably, I get enough rehit work from local shops
that customers felt it wasn't sharp and wanted something nicer. Not alot, but enough to make me consider what differenciates
my shop from others. I do have a nametag job coming in next week for about 300, I have ran tests at 300 & 600 as their
budget is a bit tight and may go with the lower dpi. Again, not much different, but visible.

I do some metal name tags and run the freq high when cutting the mask. There definitly is a visible difference. I usually
run the vector over after the paint dries as it does give a nice edge and doesn't pull at the paint as I remove the masking.

[Mike Null]

I also run at 500 dpi. As much as I'd like to use 300 it just doesn't produce a sharp enough engraving. My price on these would be closer to $7.00 and I wouldn't do the job on my mechanical engraver because cutting would use up all the time saved in the engraving process. Running a vector after rastering on this job is just a waste of time.