Ray Fine Cyclops 30W MOPA fiber laser

[James Walker]

Hi, First time post here. A year ago at age 53 I sold a successful CNC machining business to spend more time with my family. I was working 80+ hours a week and could not balance out the obligations of both so I sold and am now looking for a home based business so that I can combine both work and home life. I have a 5 year non compete in machining so with manufacturing being the only thing that I know I have gravitated to the idea of engraving medical tags and bracelets from my home. I have a few questions that I hope some are willing to help with. When I was involved in machining I used Mastercam to program and helped many on machining and programming forums so I hope some of that can come back to me so here goes.

I am planning on starting this from inside my home office and once proven I will build a separate building but for now my concern is fumes from a fiber laser inside my house and the effect it would have on my children. I am right now only planning on engraving 316 and 304 stainless steel. I am planning on a fiber laser that has an open platform. Will I kill myself and family by doing this for a few months?

I have been looking at a 3D dynamic 30W MOPA laser www.rayfinetech.com/product/product65.html. Has anyone purchased this laser from Ray Fine and what has their experience been with this?

Even though I live in the country on 100 acres my township prohibits home based business so I will not have a customer accessible store and therefore all of my business will be internet based. I will create a website and sell on Amazon, Ebay, etc. until I can generate enough traffic to my site. Has anyone had success doing something similar without having a brick and mortar site. This is all new as in my machining business I never even had a website and my sales were in person or on the phone.

As I said my life experience has been machining so I don't think that the learning process will be that difficult for me. Has anyone come from a machining background and ventured into laser engraving with success?

I thank all who have taken the time to read this and than you in advance for any replies.

Jim Walker

[Gary Hair]

Congrats on making it a priority to enjoy your life instead of working yourself to death! I honestly think, however, that your current plan would just be trading one job for another one with the same obligations. If you do a quick search on Amazon, you'll find medic alert bracelets engraved for $6.00. They probably cost $1.00 wholesale if you buy them by the 1,000's. How many of those would you have to engrave every day to make a decent wage? Even though you might want to focus on higher end products, the vast majority of customers that will find you on the internet will skip over you for the next guy that sells for $0.01 cheaper than you do.

I don't think there are any harmful byproducts generated by lasering stainless but it would be extremely easy to setup an exhaust system and remove any doubt.

The machine you are looking at is way overkill for what you are considering and although I'm usually in the "Tim Taylor" camp, this is one time I'm not. MOPA would be a big benefit for lasering stainless, but dynamic 3D and Cyclops would do almost nothing to help you engrave your products. Once you make a fixture for the tags/bracelets you are selling, you would never need Cyclops and unless they have extremely curved surfaces then 3D isn't needed either - and you would have to create an stl file for the 3D to work anyway.

I think you'll find that the vast majority of the engraving businesses that failed, failed because they either tried to "hug the world", or were too narrow focused. I don't think engraving medical tags and bracelets exclusively would ever end up being a viable business, it's too narrow of a market.

With your background it would be fairly easy to learn how to use the laser, I just think you need to expand your horizons a bit.

[James Walker]

Thank you for the honest and straightforward input Gary. I agree with your assessment on Amazon but the cheap $6.00 engraving comes from China. Yes I would be buying my blanks from China as well but my intent would be to do a very high quality engrave and work my product line up to higher quality such a silver and bracelets that are more stylish. I did extremely precision machining with tolerences down to .000010" for a lot of my parts. My parts were for the viscosity measuring industry and extremely critical. My goal would be to use Amazon only to produce some early easy work and hopefully be able to find a way to get enough traffic to a web site with higher end products. I thought that I would need a 3D dynamic head to be able to engrave curved bracelets without fixturing up a rotary head. How much depth variation will a fiber laser accept before the engrave quality degrades?

you would have to create an stl file for the 3D to work anyway This is where I am hindered compared to my machining days. When I programmed to engrave on any curved surface in Mastercam I could tell the software to cut at a specified depth around an axis or to project a tool path onto a surface and the software would calculate the XYZ moves. I had $20,000. + in the software for full 3D machining. I assumed that with a 3D dynamic laser I could lay out the text in a flat plane and the laser would project it onto the surface at the correct focus.

I recognize the risk of being narrowly focused but I need to start somewhere. When I started the machine shop I had no business and started taking on any work I could find. I eventually built a reputation and developed a niche for doing extremely precision work with zero defect. The products that I made for customers were sold and still are around the world used by refineries to measure oil viscosity.

Thank You for your input. That kind of input is exactly what I am looking for in helping me decide if this will work or not. Jim

[John Lifer]

One other member here has just recently purchased a Ray Fine machine with the Cyclops camera system. I bought a 20W mid range MOPA, recently and I know it wouldn't do a curved surface.
I think Gary brings up a point on this being an narrow focus, But if you can hit a nitch, you might be able to make some cash. There's a couple on Etsy selling luggage tags that have sold a boat load, but I have no idea as to time frame.
I'd make sure the laser will mark the width you want it to without moving. I'm not sure how much focus distance you can get. That is a manually adjusted head and there would be only a small amount of adjustment inside the head if any at all.
I'm betting that 0.08mm is max...... Just say'n get them to do a sample and a video of it doing it.

[James Walker]

Thanks for your reply John.

I'd make sure the laser will mark the width you want it to without moving. I'm not sure how much focus distance you can get. One vendor claims 28 degrees in any direction.

I'm betting that 0.08mm is max. Are you saying that if the surface varies that much the quality of the engrave would degrade?

I don't want to buy more machine than I need but I felt that a dynamic focus would give me perfect results inside the engraving range. Not being familiar with this field I was concerned that if I fixture up a curved bracelet on a fixture mounted to a rotary, the bracelet would be out of concentricity or perfect focus over some portion of the engraved area. When I machined parts on a rotary were of perfect concentricity as we would turn the of in the same setup as milling. I had a mill turn lathe that would serve that purpose. In the machining centers (milling) the rotary was perfectly true and the parts were also. If I had a bracelet that had a drop of .100" from the peak to the lowest point, would the engraver still work if the part was placed flat onto the table? Or if I fixture up a rotary and the part varied say .010" from true focus would it still engrave with good results? One vendor told me that a .002" variation would not work.

[Kristian Matz]

I have the cyclops system on my machine. So far I have not found a lot of use for it, but then again I have not found a lot of use for the fiber laser. I am still trying to figure it all out.

[Scott Shepherd]

There are a number of machinists/CNC programmers on here, self included. I agree with Gary 100%. My input would be that you're talking about going from a top tier software package and machinery to Chinese machines and knocked off software. Set your expectations accordingly. EZCAM isn't MasterCam. I feel wrong for even using them in same sentence. EZCAM is truly knocked off software of some western program and it literally has no support. If there's a bug, that bug will likely stay in it for a long, long time.

I don't have any strategy advice, but I'd go back to the drawing board if my income depended on it. There are far more profitable things than ID bracelets.

These were done on a fiber recently. Just for reference, we did 15 of them at $15 each, all the same.

IMG_3899.jpg

[John Lifer]

28degrees is probably about the same angle the galvo mirrors move. I haven't researched as it is kink of irelevant to me as a user. I do know that you can do some minor curved surface, but effect might not be what you are looking for. Just an engraved surface maybe, darkened engraving, you are most likely out of luck. Focus really matters there. And yes, software stinks. Better in some ways over my Chinese CO2 software, some ways worse.

But, I hear you, I'm in some ways in similar position, bit older, kid finishing second degree that will actually give her very good career opportunity. Only owe on my home. Just need to feed us and the dogs. I think the fiber is a great machine, you aren't really a machining, you can probably find industrial customers to build your business.

[Gary Hair]

I'm not sure how much focus distance you can get. That is a manually adjusted head and there would be only a small amount of adjustment inside the head if any at all.
I'm betting that 0.08mm is max......

A fiber will have a lot more depth of focus than that. I haven't measured mine but I would bet it is in the range of 1/4" or so, not sure where you could possibly get .08mm - that's .003"!

[James Walker]

Scott I agree EZCAD and Mastercam don't even compare. I downloaded a demo version of EZCad and it is very crude. My Mastercam was capable of 5 axis milling and I also had full mill/turn and solid modeling and also had Solid works for real solid modeling.

Did you do the bracelet engraving on a rotary? It looks like I would do better to start without the auto focus and use a 3D printer to make fixtures for a rotary. I chose a path of having a product to sell because I do not want to have a store front and then need to be able to do a multiple line of services. Too much to learn to be able to do it all like some of you guys do and I am not talented in art. I would think that most of you that are running a real engraving business that serves the public would need to have multiple lines of service and not be exclusive to engraving only. Even in my machine shop we were well diversified and had access to EDM, anodizing, power painting, plating, waterjet, etc. Right now at my age and where I am financially I don't see myself going into the full service engraving shop. With what I am thinking of doing a lot of my time would also be spent in promoting traffic to my web site. If I am successful at doing that I would see engraving becoming only a small portion of my revenue. The resale of additional products that would be sold along side of the medical tags would hopefully become the real profit generator.

John even though I have great contacts in the B2B industrial world, most of the companies that I machined for were large enough that they did there own product marking or had their components come in with all marking and engraving done. I did a lot of engraving on my milling machines and had larger runs of panels etc. sent out to be screen printed.

Thank You both for your input and comments.

[James Walker]

Gary I discussed that with a seller (LIT Laser) here in the US. He suggested that for deep engraving he would put a Z axis servo on the machine and that I could take multiple passes. Its my understanding that EZCAD will not accommodate a Z axis move for refocus. He sells Laser Studio Professional 3D that will create Z axis moves so that may be a better option for me.

[Gary Hair]

How deep are you trying to engrave James? I have engraved up to about 1/32" with no problem. One thing you'll find with refocusing is that due to the way a galvo fiber works, your image will be distorted or move if you change focus. The parts I mark are small, some less than .375", and the image is within a few thou of the edge. If I'm off focus by a mm or more then the image will not be aligned to where it should be.

[James Walker]

Gary, I don't think that I would need to go more than .005" deep. Will a 30W MOPA fiber engrave that deep using EZCAD with just multiple passes? I could see a need to cut though a .010 thick piece of Stainless. I never considered that a refocus would change the image but it makes sense due to the change in angle created by a Z axis move. The rep claims that I can not do deep engraving without a refocus. I am not sure that some of these sales reps are as well versed as they should be and will rely on people that actually use the machines in a real world environment. Much like in machining a guy that runs a CNC every day is a much better source of information than most sales reps.

[Gary Hair]

I would find a new source for your purchase... There is a big difference between a rep not knowing everything and one that gives out completely wrong information. I have two 30 watt fibers, not MOPA, and I engrave everything from surface marking to 1/32", or more, with no problem. Cutting .010 stainless is not something you want to do with these machines, they aren't powerful enough and it would take almost forever. I cut some fixtures from .020 aluminum and it took 110 passes at high power and slow speed, and they were no more than .5 x .5 rectangles in size. I can't imagine cutting anything larger in stainless.
Mopa will give you the ability to stain much easier and more reliably than non-mopa, but I'm not sure if it will give you any advantage in deep engraving or cutting.
I would recommend you contact Ray Fine and Beijing JCZ, both in China. Even though there is a language barrier, you'll probably get better info from them than it seems you are getting now. You could import it yourself and probably save a bit and get pretty much identical equipment. I'm sure LIT is importing from someone like Ray Fine or BJJCZ.
Lots of us here have gone that route and with very few exceptions, they have been pretty positive experiences.

[Scott Shepherd]

Did you do the bracelet engraving on a rotary?

Nope, that's engraved on a fiber laser. It had the red medical symbol on it, I just engraved the medical information. It's deep enough to color fill with paint. I've been in machining since 1983, been in engraving since 2007. I've been asked to do medical ID tags twice in 10 years. Something to think about.