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David Sabot
12-14-2014, 8:12 PM
I have a question regarding how to scale up your business. We do a lot of laser engraving and have two engraving machines:

Mercury 25 Watt
Spirit 40 Watt

The two mediums we are engraving on are glass and wood.

For the glass, it is the same image over and over again.
For the wood, we have about 12 different designs we engrave.

I literally have somebody in the shop from 12-18 hours a day, sometimes even pulling a 2nd or 3rd shift.

I don't understand how I am supposed to scale up. I mean, sure I could raise prices, but assuming I get a 1000 piece order, or like a competitor of mine got a 4000 piece engraving order, how the heck are you supposed to get it all done?

I can't speed up my machines, are there some SUPER fast laser engravers that I don't know about? Something that can take a 40 minute long engraving and knock it down to 5 minutes?

Scott Shepherd
12-14-2014, 9:07 PM
Well, there are certainly a lot of options out there. First, more power and speed would help a huge amount on your wood products. You could do 120W on a machine and smoke through wood really fast. I'd only be guessing but my semi-educated guess without seeing what you're engraving, is you could probably cut that 40 minutes down to 12-20 with a faster motion system and more power.

Another option would be to get away from a gantry style laser and go to a Galvo style C02 laser.

Also, larger beds to go with the faster motion help because the machine is already going from left to right, so adding a couple more at a time really cuts the cycle time down.

There's also double head machines, Universal has an "X2" machine, all of which are really fast.

You've got lot of options to speed things up. Unfortunately, they all cost money :)

Ross Moshinsky
12-14-2014, 10:42 PM
Going to a 80W laser you're going looking at doubling your production on wood and probably about the same on glass. I'd also seriously look at sandblasting your glass vs engraving it. That could save you a good amount of time.

As for really fast lasers, you can look at the Trotec Speedy which is faster than most lasers. You could probably pick up another 30-40% buying that machine vs the others on the market.

I'd figure out how much it costs per year in labor to run more than 50 hours a week. Now you know how much you can afford to spend on a laser. Assuming the cost of the laser you need at $25k, you should be able to figure out if buying a new machine is the way to go.

Kev Williams
12-14-2014, 10:53 PM
My business has always been a family thing. Never had an employee. For the past 5 years it's been just me, my wife, and my BIL. My wife paints, and does some of the invoicing. My BIL runs the old Concept 2000 and the ULS laser. I do everything else. I've asked myself your question many times over the years. Since I've never found a way of making machines faster, my answer was simple: buy more machines. 3 years ago one of my regular customers decided to have me build their operator panels because I did a better job of it than their own shop in Austria. I put up with machines too small to build and engrave the larger panels in one setup, which is why last year I bought the Triumph laser and my Gravo IS7000 engraver and moved the car outside so I'd have somewhere to put them. In 1981 we bought our first CNC engraver, and a twin to it a year later. As of now I have 3 laser engravers, a vinyl sign cutter,10 cnc engravers and all the equipment that goes with them, all stuffed into the basement- and now the garage- of our 1200 sq.ft house. The same place this business has been since 1969...

If you have the work to keep 2 machines running 18 hours a day, then you MIGHT need a faster machine, but what you really need is ANOTHER machine.

Gary Hair
12-14-2014, 11:26 PM
My guess is that a galvo would make a huge difference, as already suggested. Simply adding another machine, or two, would increase your throughput or decrease the length of your day - either way is a win! The only way this won't work is if you aren't charging enough to pay for the machines and the labor to run them - that's a different problem altogether but still easily resolved by raising prices.

David Sabot
12-15-2014, 9:34 AM
So I looked at the Gravo machines. I couldn't see any examples of them really engraving on glass, and haven't seen how detailed they can be. They did seem fast, but the bed size seemed really small.

How would going to a 120watt machine speed up production? The ips would be roughly the same, wouldn't it?

Scott Shepherd
12-15-2014, 10:23 AM
So I looked at the Gravo machines. I couldn't see any examples of them really engraving on glass, and haven't seen how detailed they can be. They did seem fast, but the bed size seemed really small.

How would going to a 120watt machine speed up production? The ips would be roughly the same, wouldn't it?

Galvo's are smaller, I've never seen a C02 one working, so I can't comment about how they work on glass.

On the 120W, you have to burn at a certain speed/power combo to get your desired effect. I don't know what you are doing, so I'm guessing. If you want a black mark, then you have to slow things down speed wise to get a black mark.

Let's take an example. If you had a 35w machine and you were working with a 140 IPS machine, you'd have to slow the IPS way down to make 25% to get a black mark. However, if you had a lot more power, you could keep the IPS in the 140 IPS range and be rolling.

It does no good to buy a fast machine with low power if you have to constantly slow the machine down to get the burn you need for the job.

Make sense?

Mike Null
12-15-2014, 10:51 AM
I guess my question is what happens if one of your machines breaks down? That would indicate to me that I need more equipment or better equipment.

Braden Todd
12-15-2014, 12:44 PM
I totally agree with others that have said to add more machines that are stronger. That's what I have done over the years, only draw back was that I needed to add more employees to keep the machines running, but in the end they have all made it a worthwhile investment.

To to add to what others have said about higher powered lasers, when I bought my epilog ext, I even negotiated an upgrade to my helix to get it from a 40 watt to 60 watt. Definitely helped my engraving and cutting times.

Sandblasting the the glass may help, but I feel from experience it takes 2-3 times as long compared to just lasering glass. The finished product is also 2-3 times better quality though too. Could add a nice higher end market for you too.

Good luck!

Joe Hillmann
12-15-2014, 12:55 PM
Are you that busy all the time or just now because of Christmas.

Are you charging enough?

The 12-18 hours you have someone in the shop. Is that all laser time or are they also answering phones, checking email, shipping, quality control? I know for me personally the actual engraving is only about half the job.

Dave Sheldrake
12-15-2014, 1:59 PM
+1 on Joe's comment, the more lasers I have the more my costs go up in-line with turnover but often profit ratio goes down.

I have 2 x as many machines this last 2 years and margins have dropped overall by 20% on turnover

cheers

dave

Frank barry
12-15-2014, 2:58 PM
Hi I think you need to look at how efficiently you are in using the machines you have and that needs a cold hard look the result of that will help you decide you may find those that are working could work another machine(which means you only have the cost of the machine extra) and if you do you can then look and see how fast the cycle on that machine needs to be so it can run in tandem with your other machines in the end of the day you need to be sure you are getting 100% out of the machines and people you have cheers Frank

George M. Perzel
12-15-2014, 6:21 PM
Dave;
Good advice from all- but consider going to a dual tube 80 watts per tube machine if you are doing multiples of the same design. Higher power means faster speed and two tubes doubles the volume!
I have a big bed dual tube Shenhui-ordered two EFR tubes for backup although the original RECI tubes are still good after three years!
This machine paid for itself ($9K delivered) within the first three months with 4000 unit ornament orders and a lot of other multiples.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

Ross Moshinsky
12-15-2014, 8:54 PM
So I looked at the Gravo machines. I couldn't see any examples of them really engraving on glass, and haven't seen how detailed they can be. They did seem fast, but the bed size seemed really small.

How would going to a 120watt machine speed up production? The ips would be roughly the same, wouldn't it?

Let's assume you're running at 50% speed and 100% power. Let's also assume 100% speed is 80ips. So you're running at 40ips on those jobs. By doubling your power (70w let's call it), you're going to run at 100% speed or 80ips. Theoretically, you should be doing 2 jobs in the time you used to do one. Now expanding the idea further, let's say you move to a Trotec Speedy which is 140ips max. So to keep the power to speed ratio, you need 120W to run at 100% speed.

Now none of this is exact. It's rough numbers but they aren't that far off either.

To make a long story short, you have the wrong machines for the work you're doing. Engraving wood all day long, you really shouldn't have anything less than 60W.