laser engraving in new unit advice please?

[Rodney Gold]

So long as you evacuate the laser fumes effectively you should be ok , a PVC pipe with the exhaust above or at roof level should be 100%. If you really run into problems , an odour scrubber should reduce all emissions or minimize em.
In all likelyhood you could proably vent thru an open window with no problems unless you do stuff like rubber stamps or PVC or a ton of wood.

[Jon Fields]

thanks Rodney..what method do you use..?

thanks

Jon

[Rodney Gold]

Well , we have 6 lasers and 3 "blowers" , 2 lasers are connected to each blower and then we use PVC pipes up the wall to about 8-9 m in height and just vent there.
In our old premises we had our neigbours complain , but it was rediculous as we were doing the same thing , but they were a linen co that stored unwrapped linen in a shed in the yard we vented to and complained about the smell of wood burning in the yard – we only had 2 lasers at the time and hardly did wood.
The owner of the business was an argumentive confrontational twerp who complained about ANYTHING- parking , noise , garbage – you name it , he complained – only stopped when I caught him in the yard having it off with one of his female employees and made pointed remarks to him that his wife might not like to hear about it.

They called all the relevant authorities and eventually after being hassled by these authorities , I told the last one to quit harrasing us "Either charge me with a contravention or F— OFF"
We had had output sampled and measured by all the authorities , health , environment , pollution etc and not ONE of them found the lasers output a contravention of ANYTHING let alone any toxicity. A car puts out more pollutants and they are worse than what a laser outputs.
Obviously there are some materials that DO put out toxic fumes , like lasering PVC which puts out chlorine etc. But you wouldnt use these anyway.

[Shane Drew]

sounds like the neighbour from hell Rodney.

Did you eventually move to get away from the twit, or just outgrow the premises?

[Rodney Gold]

We moved to bigger premises , but kept the old one for large scale signage fabrication and very dirty processes like acid etching , sand blasting , welding , grinding , spray painting, screen printing etc. We moved out 3 weeks ago finally as I have canned a few processes and we were only using about 100m square out of 500 , we reorganised our new premises and built a little on to gain the space. I have stopped vehicle signage , large scale signage like billboards and massive fascias , screenprinting etc. We have moved pretty big time into Point of sale display fabrication which is far more profitable than those areas and requires far less infrastructure. We just got 3 new lasers to boost production in that regard.

Rigging costs were killing us in the large scale signage dept despite the profitability on mnfgring and we cant really afford a full scale rigging dept along with all the capital expenses it entails

Screenprinting has become so cutthroat here , what with a whole host of garage type operations undercutting us and vehicle wraps/graphics etc have become the same withjust about EVERY small signmaker/single owner signage bus having a print and cut and everyone after a slice of the same pie.
In fact we are also considering abandoning any extraneous digital printing as we do a ton for our own use (the days of digiprinting being a licence to print money are long gone)

[Shane Drew]

Thanks Rodney.

I’d love to see your operation. Sounds like you have got it pretty well sorted.

Sounds to me like you are almost too big to be worrying about the little jobs anyway.

POS here is an overserviced market. We are only a small market by comparison to other world markets, and it is pretty well dominated by the really big players, both here and oveseas.

We have a lot of POS sold here actually done in Singapore or China.

I’m even competing with digi print banners companies here, that send the artwork to China, they are printed in China and then delivered to australia within 7 working days of order, with a free retractable 900w banner holder as well by airfreight. Most undercut my price for the same thing here in oz. 😕

I’ve given up trying to secure that market altogether.

[Rodney Gold]

I suppose if you can call organised Chaos being sorted out ….:)
China is problematic , we are losing smaller orders to em as their quality has gone up , prices are artificially low and lead times have dropped and even orders that are in the $500 range are now acceptable. I doubt the situation is gonna remain like that , some pricing is under the international materials costs.
However in the interim , while the west dickers around in regional wars , decreases its workforce productivity and is willing to overlook bad labour proctices for the price of cheap consumer goods , China has waged an economic war and has won and it’s too late to stop the juggernaut.

[Jon Fields]

Rodney,
did you contact the authorities to check out machinery etc, or did they contact you?

thanks again

Jon

[Rodney Gold]

I would never phone the authorities to come check it out , kinda like Phoning the taxman for an audit 😉

[Shane Drew]

quote Rodney Gold:

I would never phone the authorities to come check it out , kinda like Phoning the taxman for an audit 😉

:lol1: :lol1: not wrong there mate.

I never invite any authority to check my place out. They are duty bound to find something when they come out, to justify their jobs, company car and high wages 😕