Cutting Christmas ornaments from Baltic birch

[David Sparks]

I am seriously considering buying an Epilog Mini 18 to use for cutting Christmas ornaments from 3mm Baltic birch. Is 4o watts enough to do this efficiently or should I try to get a 60 watt Mini 24? I am tempted to buy a cheaper Chinese laser, but I have wanted an Epilog for a very long time and will need good tech support. Thank you for your help.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

We used to cut them with our 35 so I'd say yes, 40 is enough. Word from the wise, I use the phrase "used to" because we don't anymore, they didn't sell for nothing. Now we've got a buncha dust collectors.

[David Sparks]

Thanks for the information, Chris. Did you convert scroll saw patterns to vector art for laser use, and, if so, was it hard to learn how to do?

[Joe Pelonio]

Search the forum, there are many members that have shared CDR files of ornaments every year. If you were going to do a lot of them the more powerful machine would do the work a lot faster, but like Chris I found them hard to sell. Some people coming into my sign shop bought a few, but at Holiday Gift shows no one wanted to pay more than $4-5 for them. I decided they were too much trouble to bother with. Last summer we were in Virginia City, NV and saw a display of them at a Christmas Store, where they were priced at $2-3.