-
Laser Router: Lamps
Here’s some pics of lamps we made recently , done mostly with a laser.
I have a more fully detailed post on construction with more pics at
http://www.engravingetc.org/forum/messa … msg=1772.1
(Rob , I hope I havent contravened the “other forums” rule , but this is merely an engraving forum and it’s US based and it did allow me to upload quite a few attachments?)
There are pics and a Corel file at the other site.
Attachments:
-
8 Replies
-
Cool stuff Rodney. Do you do a lot of these types of projects?
-Marek -
those look great rodney… were they for customer requirments or something you have designed yourself?
-
Robert , they were for a lighting competition. We were approached by a design student to mnfgr her design (which was a total dogs breakfast in that it couldn’t really be made and if it could would have probably caused a fire) so I designed and made these for her. Essentially she entered them as hers but they are our products. I did a few for home and for display in our showrooms. We are finding illuminated small products like edgelits etc are becoming big money spinners – more for the point of sale trade. Decorative lighting is pretty easy to make with a laser and a CnC machine and allows a huge amount of leeway in terms of creativity etc – but it’s probably not a great seller in volume.
My pet hate is design studios , ad agencies and “inventors” cos it seems that non of them really think anything thru or are aware of manufacturing processes. Most sell the client a concept and then come to us to make it and then have to go re-sell another concept when advised of the impracticability or enormous costs. Inventors normally come up with a concept and leave us to make and sort out all the niggles and promise mnfgring nos that are telephone figures and we normally end up doing shoe sizes. some never even do the barest of market research to see if there is some sort of demand for their products or even a potential market. We have a reputation of doing the jobs no one else wants to even look at or touch so we get a lot of stuff like the lamps etc to do.
The cost of making the lamps was under 10 quid and they should sell for about 50-60 quid. I have 3 in my lounge with various shades and bulb colours and they are a conversation piece. I am really surprised not more folk here have lasers , as imho , they are a better piece of kit than a print and cut machine in terms of generating profit. -
They are great!! Wow ….. you do tons of stuff Rodney and its great that you are always willing to share your knowledge with us.
😀
-
Hi rodney,
They are great lamps, very eye catching!
It looks as if you have used perspex or did you use another brand of acrylic?
(mod-edit)
-
i agree rodney… the list is endless in what can be done with lasers.
saw some work at the sign show and loved them… actually bought a lasered glass block with the family 3d etched into the centre of the block. was amzing… did it in a few minutes cost me £40 i watched him as he setup the job on his screen… said this was job 6000+ since last year… now thats good money! 😮 6000x£40 location is everything thjough for him… he was in alton towers which has masses of traffic daily.the lamps look great… just looking at them gives you many ideas.
-
Handy , I used “perspex” (cast acrylic) , tho we have local manufacturing plants so branding is not quite the same as overseas – we have a co called lucite that mnfgrs here , but I often also use degussa products. The pex I used was edgeglow or whats called “lisadye” here.
extruded acrylics are problematic with lasers as they are pretty much stressed when manufactured and lasering them just adds a lot more stress and if you glue them or use solvents on them , they tend to stress crack – its not only lasering that does this to them , but heat bending , forming , machining etc. -
Robert , the laser you saw was somewhat different to the ones we use , they focus beams inside the glass and fracture it , the ones we use are Co2 lasers that cant do that type of stuff. We use flatbed ones , basically the same as a overhead router , but use a laser instead of a spindle. They can also work in whats called a raster mode , where the head goes back and forth like a big printer and can thus engrave photos and stuff like that.
Very similar to a grenadier – print and cut!!
Ours are not high powered , but are quite big and very fast , bed size is 1m x 500 and scan speed is up to 80″ per second. To engrave a a4 on wood is about 5 mins or less. wattages range from 30-50w – we have 3 of them and they work all day long. I recon we do on average about 1.5-2000 quids worth of work a day on them (all 3 combined).
Log in to reply.
