How portable is laser engraver

[Terry Wade]

I'm looking at the Redsail M900 laser mostly because of the large work area. If I want to set up at a county fair or craft show, how portable would a machine of this size be or would it be better to get a smaller machine for this purpose and leave the M900 in the shop. Does anyone here do county fairs and shows?

Thanks....Terry Wade

[Kev Williams]

Take a small laser to the shows. Take orders for what you can't do in the small laser.

Remember you must also tote around a blower, and possibly a generator...

[Brian R Cain]

In theory it's possible so long as you know what you're up against, after all, dealers take machines of this size and larger to trade shows all the time. The difference is that they are likely to have the right gear to transport it with and be able to get it working quickly if anything happened to it on the way. I've done a lot of trade shows and a few craft fairs. My experience has been that it isn't always possible to park close enough to the hall the show in and with our local county fair, parking is in a field, so I wouldn't even entertain the idea there.

I doubt you'll be allowed to use the exhaust blower, but need to have a filtration system when used in a public place. It will obviously depend where you're positioned at a show and what will be happening with the fume if you have a blower.

It might help if you give us an idea what your plans are for the machine at the show. Having a machine running can draw the punters, but it's unlikely they'll stay long enough to watch a large job through to the end. If I were you and I had a choice, it would be a smaller machine.

[Terry Wade]

My thoughts for the use of a smaller machine were to be able to engrave items like pet tags, luggage tags, dog tags, smaller items that would probably sell for 8-10 bucks and could be done fairly quick. Maybe a machine just big enough that I could run a rotary accessory and do a mug or wine glass for a customer. What would be best for a filtration system at what kind of cost?

[Dan Hintz]

Frankly, you really don't want to be puttering around with a glass tube laser, especially one of that weight/size. Alignment issues will be constant, the fragile tube will likely break at some point from mechanical shock, etc.

[Brian R Cain]

My thoughts for the use of a smaller machine were to be able to engrave items like pet tags, luggage tags, dog tags, smaller items that would probably sell for 8-10 bucks and could be done fairly quick. Maybe a machine just big enough that I could run a rotary accessory and do a mug or wine glass for a customer. What would be best for a filtration system at what kind of cost?

If you have the right products to personalise and can do it while they wait, there's decent money to be made. I have a customer who does nothing else. He's got two sites, one located in a shopping mall, the other in a tourist district in London and is always busy. His trick is to buy engravable goods directly from China cheaply, add a huge mark up on them and double that when they are engraved, which they mostly are. Nothing at all wrong in principle with your idea, but you only need a small machine for it, the smaller the better, really otherwise you end up with less space to display your goods.

Asking about filtration and the cost is a bit like asking how long a bit of string is. It depends on the extraction requirement the machine has, how sophisticated the filtration system is and what the materials you intend to engrave are made from. To explain this further, the larger the machine, the more powerful the extraction needs to be. Some materials clog the filters quicker than others and some filtration systems have sensors that measure filter blockage and increase fan speed to overcome filter blockage and extend filter life.

It also depends who the dealer you buy from is. I was able to negotiate a good deal with my filtration supplier so I could sell my customers their top of the range systems for the same cost as their budget range, but we moved enough systems to be able to do this and in the UK, there was fierce competition from their competitors hoping to win contracts from me. My only interest was to sell systems that gave me the least grief and I was fortuitous to be able to reduce the cost of the systems I wanted to sell at a time of heightened competitiveness.

Suggest a laser engraver and I'll suggest which filtration system you need for it.