Greetings to all creekers

[Sean De Gazon]

Greetings to all members of this most precious resource of information. My name is Sean and I am new member to the creek, I live in a little island in the Caribbean called Trinidad. I have been browsing and gathering research on the internet for a couple months now and have more or less made up my mind to purchase an Epilog mini 12x24 45w laser engraver. I think it is the ideal machine that will suit my needs for opening my own engraving business and I have been in contact with the distributor for my part of the world which is located in Puerto Rico. I have also been in touch with one of the Epilog sales Reps by the name of Jon Stone and he has so far been very helpful. I am currently working on financing this venture and hope to be able to purchase my system within about 6-8 weeks. I have a couple of questions. Firstly what would be the ideal exhaust system to use for this machine? I have a dedicated room in my home for this business and will be venting the fumes to the backyard. I don't have any neighbors behind my house so this can be taken into consideration. Secondly would you consider the compressor and the exhaust unit very noisy? I am a bit of a night owl and was wondering if I would be disturbing my wife if I so choose to work the graveyard shift. Finally I have been reading mixed reviews on the actual learning curve required for the settings for speed and power for these machines. Is it a difficult task in terms of wasting a lot of materials via trial and error or would it come naturally after a while, I read somewhere that it is highly advisable that one write down their speed and power settings in a notebook or folder when working.
Anyways thats about all for now thanks for any responses in advance.

[Frank Corker]

Welcome to the Creek Sean. I bought my extractor unit at the same time as I bought the laser, it was the recommended one by the Epilog dealers, as was the small compressor. Noise levels are low, only slightly higher than that of the laser on it's own. The compressor is noisier, but you generally won't need it as much. If you are working in the same house as you live in, doing the graveyard shift would not be such a great idea, if it is a building seperate from the main sleeping area, then you will probably get away with it.

The learning curve is just that, it's a learning curve, some get it quicker than others. The more you do the easier it gets, we all learn by our mistakes. To give you an indication of what I am talking about, I don't think there are many people on the site who engraves in exactly the same way, the variations are vast and it generally comes out at each to their own. There are really technically minded people who will go only for the settings recommended in the hand book and nothing else. Then there are people like myself who are willing to try anything, if we get a result then hey ho! if we fail it's just tough titty and move on to the next attempt. It has a great deal of experimentation to make yourself good at what you will be doing. How are you ever going to know what is right if you only do what the book tells you? What happens when you do it with more power? Less power? The more you do the more knowledge you gain.

I've been doing this for just on two years now. I never get bored. It's great to try everything from wood through to the quill on a feather, a peanut, the husk of a coconut, the shell from the beach. What happens if you engrave a biscuit or a dog bone? You won't find any of the answers for those questions in the manual. Get out and test it. How long is the learning curve? How long is a piece of string.

[glenn bradley]

Dis ya forum irie. Oops I guess that's a bit northwest of you, eh? Glad to have you on board.

[Joni Campbell]

Welcome Sean, I am new here to and I agree whole heartedly with Frank....I wouldn't run my machine at night if someone in the house is trying to sleep, unless you were to build some sort of cubby hole to keep the exhaust system and compresser in that is sound proofed, that is what I am in the process of doing here shortly. The laser is not noisy on it's own.
Like Frank said...just try it and if it don't work try other settings, it is fun playing around with the laser anyways hehehe
well good luck with your new adventure, I know I am having a blast and look forward to many years of learning new tricks.

[Sean De Gazon]

Thanks guys and gals for the warm welcome and insightful advice.
I dont think I will be work at night to disturb the wifee in case she decides to put me in the doghouse. I am hoping to have my Epilog laser within the next 6-8 weeks so I can perhaps use it to make some dough for the christmas season I'm sure I'll have lots of fun with my new toy when it finally arrives.

[Mike Null]

There are quiet exhaust blowers. I've been using my laser at all hours (in the basement) and my wife can't hear it in the bedroom. The quite ones are usually in-line blowers. I bought mine at Grainger. I don't know if you have access to Grainger or McMaster-Carr but a 300 -400 cfm unit will be plenty.

[Sean De Gazon]

Thanks Mike I will check it out online. I travel to the US often and I also have a skybox that i ship stuff to in Florida.They in turn ship to Trinidad once a week so depending on the price I can always use that option as well.

[Phyllis Meyer]

Greetings from Wisconsin! Glad to have you here at the creek where you will find (as you have already) a wealth of knowledge and great people willing to share thoughts, advice, and their business ups and downs.

I absolutely love the quote you posted from George Burns! With that in mind...have fun with your new machine, trial and error is ok. Also, call every supplier...JDS, Laserbits...and all the rest and tell them you are going into the laser engraving business and you would like samples and their catalogs! They shipped all of it to us free of charge! You can actually do this now and your mailbox will be filled with fun things you can laser when it does arrive. Those are just a few of the many suppliers out there, and I believe there is a post where many more are listed with the 800 numbers.

In our small town we visit the local woodworking shops, cabinet makers, glass companies and you would be surprised at the items they have in their garbage:) (that us laser engravers could use to practice on)and they will let you take so they don't have to dump)!! Enjoy and best of luck with your new venture!

Sincerely,
Phyllis:)

[Darren Null]

Firstly the noise- my rig is about the same noise level as a old big aircon unit. The noise goes up when I turn the compressor and air-assist on, so I try to do air-assist stuff during the day. You may or may not get away with it at night...depends on your house.

As to the learning curve- spend a few days on free and found items to get your eye in before moving onto paid materials would be my advice. Bits of wood from the shed, stones from the beach, biscuits from the cupboard, old t-shirts and pairs of jeans- almost anything. Be careful with plastics- material containing PVC cacks up your laser and gives off chlorine gas. I wouldn't go for shiny metal in the beginner stages either, if I were you.

I'm still on the early stages of the learning curve myself, and enjoying the ride immensely. My favourite found items so far have been wooden packing cases from greengrocers- I've learned an immense amount about technique by seeing what you can do with them. It's not just the speed and power- the image you're feeding the machine and the settings you use are important too. Some things I've learned are:

Bread doesn't autofocus
Slate has little flecks in that kill images
Images on glass- stick to 300dpi or you (well I- your mileage may vary) get a silhouette.
Text on glass- 500+ dpi makes it smoother
You can get an image on white marble.
Speed up your learning curve by giving yourself an impossible project.
Keep your lens and mirrors clean, and the tracks for the motors.
CorelDraw doesn't really like JPEG. TIFF or PSD is fine.
Manufacturers settings are a good place to start. Sometimes you can get very different effects by quite small tweaks that may or may not work for the job/material in hand.

Hope that's helped a bit.