Production etching of irregularly shaped objects w/o fixtures: Camera solutions?

[Robert Mangas]

Hi all,

First post here- a good friend has a shop that sells (among other things) laser-cut and -etched objects. She's approached me (engineer-type looking to leave the corporate world) about producing some of the things she's already selling and also collaborate with her on bringing new items/designs to market. At this point I own no equipment but have industry experience in CAD/CAM and the ability to buy a turn-key solution in the mid-5-figure range should the overall economics justify doing so.

My question is whether or not there are systems/platforms/manufacturers that use a vision/camera system to speed production of objects like these: Etsy link 1 (etched stones), Etsy link 2 (etched wooden discs and plaques). The challenge as I see it is that the substrates are not uniform, making fixturing difficult. Further, while I believe one could load up the work area with stones or wood discs and then manually place the pattern to be etched on each one that would clearly slow down production. The ideal situation would be that I could load the work area with substrate and the camera system would then position the laser head at the appropriate origin for each piece.

Does that exist? I was pretty sure I'd seen it during my initial equipment reviews but now can't find anything related; seems like some of the big name camera setups (Trotec, Kern) are aimed squarely at cutting graphics, which isn't of use to me. The website info on the Epilog camera claims 'drag and drop' functionality, but it would sure be better if the system could find the object, scale/orient the image, and then burn.

Any input?

Thanks in advance!
Robert

[Bill George]

If you look at the products being sold on Etsy you will find most being sold for a very low cost, barely above making the seller more than a minimum wage for his/her time. You need to find a niche market doing one of a kind personalized or get some commercial accounts. If I was buying a new machine today it would have the camera.

[Robert Mangas]

Hi, thanks for the reply. The Etsy links are only to show the type of product I'm talking about making; my friend with the shop would be a volume wholesale account and it's likely I would be able to develop other similar accounts from that relationship.

Do you know of any camera systems that can do what I'm asking about?

[Bill George]

Hi, thanks for the reply. The Etsy links are only to show the type of product I'm talking about making; my friend with the shop would be a volume wholesale account and it's likely I would be able to develop other similar accounts from that relationship.

Do you know of any camera systems that can do what I'm asking about?

No I do not but for alignment of just one item it would speed up time.