Laser Fail

[two_star]

(I tried to post this last night to lj, but my lj client appears to no longer be working. So I'm doing the socially conscious thing and crossposting to dreamwidth.)

Lessons of the day: I am an idiot, and ADX Portland's laser cutting services are... disappointing

Comments

[cissa]

Um. We do have a laser. OK, it's (I think) 25 watts, but it cuts acrylic fine. I'm pretty sure it'll do 3/16"; I think I use that for hydraulic press blanks.

Last I heard, going rate for lasering was $1-1.50/minute, plus materials.

Dunno if we could do it for a reasonable price for your project, but we may want to talk. :) Email me at afisher AT afmetalsmith DOT com if you want to talk, and I'll pull J into it (he does the actual lasering; I mostly just do the artwork).

Also, we do have an Etsy shop devoted to lasered things (mostly): electriccelt.etsy.com, so if you didn't have that venue yourself, it could possibly be an option... but you probably should have that yourself. :)

[two_star]

Hmm. I'd imagine that both the going rate per minute and the speed and time of cutting are functions of the power of the laser. What this means for what power of laser I should seek out, I don't know.

I sent you a query a while back (for an earlier iteration of this project) and received no reply, so I assumed you weren't interested. That went to the pixelations address instead of the afmetalsmith one though; I don't know if that was the problem. For this project, since I have what's left of the materials here, it probably makes sense to look a little harder for someone local, rather than having it shipped twice. I will keep you in mind for future projects though.

[cissa]

Sorry I didn't reply to your previous! The pix address gets so buried in spam sometimes that stuff gets lost; that's why I'm mostly using the afm one these days.

I'd also like to suggest making some of your stuff out of lasered wood/plywood. It's a really different aesthetic, of course, but wood appeals to some people to whom acrylic would not. There's various kinds and colors of wood one can get if one needs a mix, or a plywood with 2 good faces can be stained. -or even spray-painted; we're doing that this year with gold paint for our much-delayed Xmas ornaments/cards; the grain is showing through the light paint, and it looks great for this (rather medieaval) style.

[ext_977429]

I haven't tried these guys, but their web site makes them seem geek-friendly. They take SVG files with lines marked in different colors to indicate cutting depth.

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