Laser Engraver/ Cutter

[Ben Framed]

Yes an excellent idea. Les sharing your good ideas are so appreicated! And I remember your good comb honey posting series. How much time in total do you think this may save percentage wise?

Phillip

[Lesgold]

Not sure yet Phillip. I think they will be more expensive to make materials wise if I use plywood but they should be cheaper to make if my time is considered. I will play with an idea tomorrow and post it. The other advantage would be the equipment and experience required to construct this type of project. A cheap laser cutter and a laptop should be able to produce better results than the table saw, drop saw, compressed and staple gun. This would be an ideal investment for someone with limited construction skills who has an interest in design and computing.

[BeeMaster2]

Les,
Looks great. Since you are using the laser cutter, why not engrave your logo on the top board.
Do you have a planer? If so, you could plane down the pallet boards to whatever thickness you need and use them instead of buying plywood. Just make sure there are no nails in the boards.
Jim Altmiller

[Lesgold]

Thanks Jim,

The engraver will do that quite easily as well. At the moment, I burn a logo into the frames but this also takes time. I?ve been thinking about all sorts of ways of producing them and using my time efficiently. I haven?t made any comb honey this season as we haven?t had a honey flow and the bees are doing it tough. Next season should be much better and I will making some for the markets. I currently use what is called a merch grade of pine to construct the frames. It is a cheap, seasoned and untreated pine board that is non structural due to knots and imperfections. I can cut around those areas and produce frames for about 15 cents each. If I use plywood, the material cost will be somewhere between 20 and 50 cents per unit depending on the size and quality of the ply used. I have used pallet material for normal frames in the past but it is very unstable in the hive and some of them twist and move in all sorts of directions.

[Lesgold]

Today will be spent bottling honey and this stoped me from playing in the workshop. (Well for  some of the time anyway.) I wanted to replenish my stock of fancy jars with turned wooden lids and wondered if I could incorporate the laser into part of this process by adding another feature to that particular product. I had been reading up on engraving glass and it appears that there are a number of ways of approaching it. As glass is clear, a laser beam passes through it without burning anything due to its transparency. The way to engrave the outer skin is to put a solid coating over the surface and then engrave into that covering. Some of the glass will be impacted during this process and an etched look will result. At the moment I can only engrave flat surfaces so I thought I?d have a go on a couple of square jars. The surface to be engraved has to be perfectly clean to ensure a good result. The side to be engraved was washed with soap followed by a clean with methylated spirits. Lids were placed on the jars to keep them clean on the inside and a small mark was placed next to the side that had been cleaned. Even finger prints could upset the quality of the engraving so care had to be taken in the handling of the jars. I decided that the best method for me was to use a water based, flat black kids paint. An even coating could be applied with an air brush to the area to be etched. A number of very thin coats were applied with the hot air gun being used to dry the paint layers quickly.

[Lesgold]

When a solid, matt black surface was achieved, the jars could then be taken to the engraver. Due to the size of the jars, the engraver had to be lifted to allow the laser head to clear the glass surface. I set the image to be engraved and then made the adjustments required to allow the machine to do its job. I may have to tweak settings and test alternatives to ensure the best results can be achieved. You can see some of the graphic appearing as the laser is running. The last photo shows the result after the engraving is completed. You can see that the laser cut through the paint and left a frosted look on the glass.

[Lesgold]

Being a water based paint, it washed away quickly. The outer surface was then dried and the engraving could be seen clearly. The same effect could be achieved using chemical based paints but they are expensive and solvents have to be used to remove all evidence of the paint. It appears as though quite a few people use this method as the water based paint is difficult to apply evenly when using a brush or roller. The air brush was ideal and solved the problem. Cleanup was less than a minute so it was a win/ win for the water based paint. I have also seen clips of people dipping glass into thinned paint with good results. The engraving really popped when the two jars were filled with honey. The darker background provided some contrast to allow the image to stand out. I will see what the response is when I take these two samples to the markets on Sunday.

[cao]

I am continually impressed with the creativity and quality of your projects.  Continue the good work.

[Lesgold]

Thanks cao. It?s always good to get into the workshop to design and make things.

[The15thMember]

That has got to be the most beautiful jar of honey I've ever seen!  You are going to run every other honey producer out of business! 

[Ben Framed]

That has got to be the most beautiful jar of honey I've ever seen!  You are going to run every other honey producer out of business! 

I agree! Nice Les!

[Lesgold]

Thanks guys. It does look pretty cool. It will be interesting to see what the customers say at the markets on Sunday. This type of engraving may be more suited to special family gifts etc as there is extra work involved and I?m not sure that people would be prepared to pay more for an engraving unless it was personalised.

[Lesgold]

Had the family down for the weekend and had the chance to do a bit of design work with my grandson. He is just about to start high school so I thought it may be a good chance to plan and cut a pencil box for him to keep at home. Many years ago I used to have my younger students cut this type of project using hand tools and traditional woodworking techniques. These days things have changed and computers do much of the work for you. We sat down and spent a few hours working on a basic plan and this morning while the kids were at the beach, the project was completed. I wanted a bit of a locking mechanism for the sliding lid and this is what I came up with. It is really easy to waste time doing this sort of stuff but the results are worth it.  The accuracy of this machine is outstanding.

[The15thMember]

That's insanely awesome! 

[Lesgold]

I finally made the effort to cut a nuc from plywood. I wanted to use 9mm ply on the ends as this would give me the correct size for a frame rest. I decided to use the 9mm ply for all sides as the laser cutter didn?t like thicker ply for some reason. It may have been the material that was used for the cross veneers. That?s not an issue for me though as I don?t really need the insulation given from a thicker material. Most of my nucs are made in the mid spring or early summer when temperatures are pretty good overnight. I did use 12mm ply for the lid and base to give extra support. The base was recessed into the sides to help to keep the ply nice and straight. If I needed a few nucs, joint work could be cut while I?m assembling others. This should save a bit of time in the long run.

[Ben Framed]

Les the capabilities of this machine are awesome!

[Lesgold]

You are right Phillip. At about $700 US, it?s going to add a lot of value to the workshop.

[Lesgold]

Had another bright idea for the laser while babysitting grandkids last night. I make all of my own labels and many of them are swing tags that are printed both sides and then cut out by hand with scissors. A small hole for string is then drilled in one corner using a high speed rotary engraver with a burr bit attached. It?s not a difficult task but it does take time and is not completely accurate. I decided to do the cutting out and drilling on the laser cutter to hopefully improve the quality of the label and reduce time. I spent about 20 minutes producing the design and the template required to hold the A4 sheets in place. The printed cardboard sheets are quickly dropped in place and some magnets are placed on each label to keep everything flat. Probably a bit of overkill but I thought it would be better to be conservative on the first run. 12 labels had the small holes produced and the labels accurately cut in 48 seconds. The results were outstanding. I might try cutting out about 4 sheets piggy backed to see what happens.

[Occam]

This is great man, looks like an amazing piece of kit to have in the shop. Really cool

[Lesgold]

One of the disadvantages of this laser is that it doesn?t have an easy way of getting material in the right position without a lot of mucking around. I saw a YouTube clip on a guy who made his own alignment laser which he added to his engraver for approximately locating his plywood before the cutting process was started. Thought this was a good idea so I decided to design and make my own similar to what he used. I purchased a cheep laser and battery pack online. All up it cost about $14. I twisted the wires together and put a battery into the holder and this is the result.