Cut Offs - What Do You Do With Yours?

[Lynn Misanti]

We are having a great debate here.

What do you do with your cut off materials that are too small for making plaques, etc but too big to deem scrap for recycling?

We have racks of cut off steel, aluminum and flex. There has to be a better way. Thank you.

[Kev Williams]

Having been in this business for almost 50 years, I can say with no hesitation, if it IS too small for plaques, then it's NOT too big to throw out! Keep a few big pieces you WILL use and recycle the rest. Anything else just gets bypassed for a fresh piece anyway.

I keep putting off my recycling, I probably have 200 pounds of brass and aluminum scraps I need to haul out of here. It has a way of taking over... ;)

[Joe Pelonio]

It took me a couple of years to learn that scraps are not worth saving, taking up a lot of space, and more time than it's worth to use them. I had a guy that would pick up the acrylic to be chopped up and melted down to be made into black, but eventually he dropped out of sight. Fortunately the bigger jobs I do now use up most everything, with a good yield per piece so not much left to waste.

[Bert Kemp]

Its the same thing with laser wood scraps , I cut something out of a piece of Plywood and say Oh I can get a wood key fob out of that or some other dumb thing. Well after 2 years I just burnt 50 or 60 lbs of scrap wood out in the fire pit. I got more enjoyment sitting out by the fire then I ever would have cutting 1 or 2 key fobs at a time out of scrap. So recycle yours or sell it for scrap and go out to dinner with the green. :)

[Lee DeRaud]

Its the same thing with laser wood scraps , I cut something out of a piece of Plywood and say Oh I can get a wood key fob out of that or some other dumb thing. Well after 2 years I just burnt 50 or 60 lbs of scrap wood out in the fire pit. I got more enjoyment sitting out by the fire then I ever would have cutting 1 or 2 key fobs at a time out of scrap.True that. Between the scraps and the chunks I'd buy whenever I wandered into my hardwood supplier, I was well on my way to getting my own episode of "Hoarders".

[Mike Null]

I have stacks of aluminum, steel, and plastic gathering dust. I've been promising myself I'd take the metal to the scrap company. The rest I'm going to sort and give to a friend who has a laser in his garage as a toy.

[Julian Ashcroft]

I cut mainly 3.6mm plywood and any decent sized off cuts I will keep. The laser bed on my smaller machine is 400 x 300 and that's what size I cut my plywood down to. I have recently been making clocks with a diameter of 258mm which left me with around 140mm of ply left. I have turned these into Christmas decorations.

[Jiten Patel]

We are in the same situation as many. Hoarded scraps forever with the attitude "we can use that for *insert small crappy product*" but we ended up with so much we binned the lot. Saying that, we sat and came up with loads of ideas, but 2 of them now sell extremely well and use small pieces so we now keep the scrap and use it for those products. Very tedious, but the material has been paid for from the job the scrap came for, so it's all profit (from the acrylic part) which is always good.

[Kev Williams]

I have probably 2 cubic feet of .094" thick black anodized "holes", from cutting holes in operator panels. Quarter and half-dollar sized mostly Everyone tells me they'll come up with some idea to use them. Yup. They're going away this week. And anyway, I'll be making more soon...

[Lynn Misanti]

Thank you for all the replies. Hopefully this information will help with our scrap clutter.

[Lee DeRaud]

I have probably 2 cubic feet of .094" thick black anodized "holes", from cutting holes in operator panels. Quarter and half-dollar sized mostly Everyone tells me they'll come up with some idea to use them. Yup. They're going away this week. And anyway, I'll be making more soon...Those almost sound useful...unlike, say, the thousands of 1/8" diameter wood and acrylic "plugs" I end up with from cutting the holes in cribbage boards.

[David Somers]

Lee....If Dunkin Donuts can market donut holes with such success surely you can find a way to sell cribbage holes? <grin>

Kev....a serious thought. Anyway to use those disks as coins in some way for groups? Might not be worth the effort. But was thinking if they are anodized it would be fairly quick to laser engrave them with a groups design and sell them? Or engrave them with your company logo and give them out as business cards?

Dave

[Dave Sheldrake]

I have probably 2 cubic feet of .094" thick black anodized "holes", from cutting holes in operator panels. Quarter and half-dollar sized mostly Everyone tells me they'll come up with some idea to use them. Yup. They're going away this week. And anyway, I'll be making more soon...

Keep them Kev, I'll PM you with a use that will see all those over 25mm diam having a market

[Bert Kemp]

No Fair Dave I cry Foul LOL I just told him I wanted them LOL :D


Keep them Kev, I'll PM you with a use that will see all those over 25mm diam having a market