Paintball Gun Engraving

[Dave Fifield]

I thought you might like to see some pictures of some anodized aluminum paintball gun parts that I recently laser engraved for someone. The "all over" look is much more difficult than you'd think. It required such measures as filling the barrel with ceramic beads to make it heavy enough so it didn't slip on the rotary and using the 4" lens with the auto-focus and air assist tube removed a) so there was enough depth of focus, and b) so these bits didn't bump into the gun body!








More pictures (of other paintball guns) and links to higher resolution copies on my website here.

Cheers,

[Mike Null]

Dave:

Really great stuff. You should give up your day job.

[Joe Pelonio]

I thought you might like to see some pictures of some anodized aluminum paintball gun parts that I recently laser engraved for someone. The "all over" look is much more difficult than you'd think. It required such measures as filling the barrel with ceramic beads to make it heavy enough so it didn't slip on the rotary and using the 4" lens with the auto-focus and air assist tube removed a) so there was enough depth of focus, and b) so these bits didn't bump into the gun body!

Cheers,

Nice work, but Geez, I think I would have refused the job - Yankee logos...and you're in A's territory?!?!??

[Vicky Orsini]

We also did a paintball marker recently.

This particular marker runs for around $2000 retail, so I was more than a little nervous on this job! We also made the clear acrylic grip covers, but they broke during the first round of play, so it's not the best material for anything other than display.

[Allan Wright]

Nice work on both markers.

I don't think I'd be brave enough to engrave someone else's $1000 paintball gun, although I might consider doing some of my own less expensive ones......

[Dave Fifield]

Mike - I don't think I could make anywhere near what I make doing my day job with engraving/woodwork. I think I'll leave things as they are for now.

Joe - I guess I'm a sports atheist! I like to play squash racquets, but that's about as close to sports as I come. I heard they are thinking of moving the A's to Fremont, and the big SFO team (49'ers, or was it the Giants, I forget) to Santa Clara! Bad choices AFAIC - anything that makes traffic worse round here is bad IMO

Vicky - Great job on that marker! They're not easy to do, are they?!

Allan - I had NO IDEA they cost that much!!! I thought they'd be a couple hundred at most! I still have one more to do - I'm going to check, double check, and triple check the dimensions before I let the laser go at it now that I know how much they cost!!!

Cheers,

[John Hardage]

That's amazing stuff! I was just thinking of asking how you got into the grooves without losing detail, then I remembered the 4" lens.... I don't suppose you'd share approx. what you'd charge for a job like that? Just started playing with anodized items. Looks and sounds like it oughta be a lot, though I do love how quickly that stuff runs off. Seems like the setup would be time consuming....

[Vicky Orsini]

We don't have a 4" lens. We would pause the job whenever it started going out of focus a little and reset the focus height to the new level. A little time consuming, but it worked. The whole marker, not counting set-up, ran about $100. Set-up of the graphics was actually easier than I anticipated. The marker body fit into my scanner. The rest of the bits were all tubular, so it was just a matter of adapting them onto the rotary attachment.

[Dave Fifield]

I did a test to see what the usable focal height range of the 4" lens was. It came out as about +/- 0.25", which is pretty usable! When setting up the gun parts I manually focussed at about the mid height point and didn't have to reset the focus at all.

The setup is indeed the bulk of the work. I had to make MDF jigs to hold the parts square and flat, then laid photos of the parts onto the jig drawing in Corel (like you did apparently Vicky) to get the exact placement just right.

I charge about $1 per minute. I start the clock going when I start work in Corel Draw and stop it when I have finished engraving and turn off the laser. The marker with the NY Yankees logo all over it took me quite a bit longer, since it was the first one that I did and I ended up redrawing the logo myself as I wasn't happy with the quality of the image supplied. Also, I triple checked everything and did trial runs etc. to make sure it was going to go right! So, for that one, I charged $120 (about half-rate, cuz it took 4 hours to do). This is about 1/4 of the price I have seen others charge for similar work, however, I know that the people I'm doing this for simply can't afford to pay those inflated prices.

HTH,