Small tabletop laser for shows.

[Don Young]

I am looking to supplement my two large lasers by purchasing a much smaller unit to use do custom while-you-wait work at shows. Any suggestions for a smaller machine at a reasonable price. Anything less than 100 pounds would work and I am not to opposed to buying a Chinese laser. Any help from you experts is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Don

[Joe Hillmann]

You might try contacting Steve Cox and Steve Beckham. They both have setups for mobile lasers. There is also a guy who has one permanently mounted in a trailer who posted pictures of it a month or so ago. Maybe to a search for mobile laser?

[Lee DeRaud]

For what it's worth, the smaller (12"x16") ULS Versalaser is about 95lbs. I'm not sure you'd want one much lighter than that, since the lost weight would probably come at the expense of reduced stiffness, which is not something you want in a unit you'll be moving around a lot.

[Duncan Crawford]

I am looking to supplement my two large lasers by purchasing a much smaller unit to use do custom while-you-wait work at shows. Any suggestions for a smaller machine at a reasonable price. Anything less than 100 pounds would work and I am not to opposed to buying a Chinese laser. Any help from you experts is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Don


The Epilog Mini-18 in 40 watts is all of 70 lbs without their stand, and works well for me, at least in "table top" mode in a home shop. My local Epilog rep usually has a Mini-24 at the regional woodworking shows, along with some sort of portable filter unit. He'll run the Aztec calendar and similar items. No reason why you couldn't do photos or keychains or whatever with either unit.

duncan

[Dee Gallo]

That is so interesting, Duncan! Wonder why the Epilog Zing-16 is 95 pounds, whereas the bigger Mini-18 is 70 pounds?

So, Don, the Zing has a smaller footprint but more weight. It looks like it's the same as the ULS Versalaser at 95 pounds.

[Steven Cox]

You might try contacting Steve Cox and Steve Beckham. They both have setups for mobile lasers. There is also a guy who has one permanently mounted in a trailer who posted pictures of it a month or so ago. Maybe to a search for mobile laser?

That was probably me, some of the pics I posted only showed the canopy fitted to the vehicle which could be easily mistaken for a trailer. If you look at the first pic you'll see the canopy is on the back of a Ford Falcon AU 1 Ton Tray Bay Ute. The second pic from the rear looks like a trailer.

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@ Don,
Making a Laser mobile is more than possible but you don't want to go too small as that will limit you on what can be done. Ours has a 500mm x 300mm engraving table with height adjustment up to 250mm and a 60 Watt tube, so the machine itself is quite bulky and without the cooling system weighs in at 60 kilos (rough conversion 120 pounds). Then add 30 kilos for the cooling system with the water and another 20 kilo or so for accessories & jigs like rotary for glassware etc.... I'd like to have something bigger but the reality is I've probably only rejected 2 jobs in 2+ years that we couldn't do due to size. The chinese machines smaller than this one are pretty crappy, they don't have a rize & fall table so you are limited in what you can engrave/cut and power wise they are only 25 watts to 40 watts.

Originally we had it mounted in a truck that had a Tail Lift and everything was on trollies so it was possible to move it into a building to do Trade Shows but then came the problem of venting the exhaust so that limited us to only a few products we could engrave to avoid the odours. We found that going mobile we needed to be able to engrave a variety of products to make it work. Everybody that looks at our stall is amazed at what we have but converting that interest into sales is the challenge unless you target specific products to certain events, like dog tags for dog agillity shows or custom trophies/awards for sports events, then anything else you sell at those events is a bonus.

Our set up with the ute has the Laser permanently mounted so trade shows are out unless they are outdoors. We have build our own vent system that we built thanks to the post by Dan Hintz on these forums for a DIY venting system. The vent works well outdoors but you still can't get rid of 100% of the odour, so we now inject some citrus air freshener into the cabinet during engraving to help mask the unpleasant smells that don't make it into the exhaust vent and escape the cabinet.

The other thing to consider when you go mobile is power. We found that not all shows have power available. We have a battery/inverter system but that adds over 200 kilos, deep cycle batteries are heavy and we have 6 of them. As a backup we also have an 2KVA inverter generator but we can't get it in the ute so it's carried on our caravan and we don't tow the caravan to every event only country ones and or 2+ day events. The battery system gives us enough power for a day provided we limit ourselves to engraving only and turn the machine off in between jobs. All up with our added canopy, equipment, stock and displays our vehicle is carrying 850 kilos which is 150 kilos less than its max 1 ton capacity.

If you need any specific help or advice, PM me I'll be happy to help if I can.

Steve.

[Joe Hillmann]

Steve,
It was you that I was thinking of when I posted that.