Want to start your own laser engraving business? Or thinking of adding a new vertical of laser cutting to your current business? To bring more diversity and uniqueness to your table. Or looking to add some creative side to the business which can help you earn extra?

If yes, then this article is the perfect place to start.

To help you understand and set up the laser engraving and cutting business, here we are with the steps you can follow:

1. Create a plan

Planning is the foundation for any business. Without planning you cannot move your business in the right direction. So, before you place an order for your laser engraving machine you need to create a strong business plan.

Make sure to:

• Determine your target.
• Understand your competitors.
• Describe your company’s vision precisely.
• Prepare a solid marketing plan.
• Figure out a structure for your business.
• Set funding.
• Create a budget.
• Add emotional touch to your products.

2. Set goals

You need to set a target and time limit to achieve those targets. Make a very minute set of goals like what do you want to accomplish in the next three months or six months or a year?

Understand, while preparing this target don’t set an unachievable goal. Set realistic goals that will help you get nearer to your goals. It even helps you to know exactly where you need to focus to grow your business to the next level. 

Setting goals gives you full control over the outcome of your business and it even provides you motivation to keep going further to achieve success.

3. Add value to your products

Adding personalization is trending. Many big brands like Starbucks, Spotify, etc. also add personalization to their offerings.

Thinking, why do they add up such things?

It’s simple. To promote their brand in a personalized way to stay relevant in this ever-changing market. People are ready to purchase and even pay premiums on the things with which they can relate. 

Millennials like to invest in things like personalized diaries, t-shirts, bottles, mugs, etc. Hence, you should study and try to understand the current trends of the market before finalizing your products. Also, to make quality products, invest in high-grade laser parts like Trumpf eco nozzle and precitec nozzles.

This will help you add value to your products and additionally, making it easier for you to promote your products.

In today’s era, personalization is the key and as a store owner, you need to work according to customers’ needs.

4. Promote your brand every day

For any business, marketing is the key to success. You cannot miss on this point as without marketing it is possible your business stops growing.

For laser engraving business, you need to understand that what you are offering is something unique and it is easy for people to miss it. Especially if you are making something intricate using Trumpf eco nozzle and precitec nozzles.

People think it is something they don’t really need. So, you need to show your products and educate your audience of the product.

Don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as you think. All you need to do is add some extra efforts in marketing whilst keeping the message same across all the channels.

The way you do marketing speaks a lot about your brand so make sure to prepare a proper plan before running your marketing campaign. 

Here, we have shared some ideas to market your laser engraving business:

Start by offering some giveaways to the community. Tie-up with some non-profit organizations and give them your products for free. 

This can be the foundation and at the same time, it will even help you introduce your company. You can even donate a few things like small signboards, placards, etc. Small giveaways like this will help you stand out and at the same time, they will even help you promote your brand.

5. Give yourself an opportunity to explore

It does not matter if designing is not your strong point. There are many online sites where you can download unique design files. These designs can be free or paid but you can easily use them and engrave them on your products.  A small price for bigger pays off.

Wrapping it up:

Laser engraving is a vast field. And you can easily explore it by taking a small risk. The tips described above will make sure that you don’t face any major obstacles while setting up your business. Also, only invest in quality laser machines and parts like Trumpf eco nozzle and precitec nozzles.

Laser cutting, etching, engraving. It is one of the coolest ways to bring your designs to reality. It provides you results with precision, multi-layered lettering, and design.

Laser cutters are powerful, realistic tools to burn most things like wood, paper, plastic to create a design that you imagine.

So, before you buy a laser cutter, keep these five things in mind to make a precise choice.

The Main Choice: Laser Cutter

A typical laser cutter that most designers and engineers use consists of a 100W laser that have Trumpf nozzles. Between the laser’s extractor fan and sourced materials, your cost can reach $8000 to construct the whole setup. If you are just starting, you can even go for a smaller laser like 40W laser cutters available online. You can even search for parts like precitec nozzles or Trumpf parts online to setup the perfect product for your use.

40W laser cutter can help you with etching the designs you want on a thin place of birch plywood. You can also use acrylic material if you are looking for some cool opaque effects. Also, you can retrofit an old DVD players’ 5W laser into a working laser cutter if you have smaller use cases. It can do more than just etching a design on a piece of paper.

How to Source the Equipment to Build One?

In the digital age, you find many online options for your requirements. For nozzle parts, you can go for precitec nozzles, Trumpf nozzles online to source the best equipment for your business. Other than that consider referrals from your circle. They might also work best!  

What Materials to Choose?

You can not just pick any old material and start blasting it with a laser. There are numerous materials like polycarbonate sheets that produce thick, acrid smoke when coming in contact with the laser. Also, make sure that you don't go for cardboard as much as possible. Because the focused heat can cause fire easily when dealing with electrical equipment.

Birch plywood is a few millimeters thick but worth to add material; you can design simply with this material.

Your First Design

To find the best designs to start with, the internet is your bible. Of Course, it does not mean copying others' work. But you can get some cool ideas with which you can create your own designs. You get ready-made SVG files, DXF to put into a laser cutter software for printing.

General Things for Using Laser Cutter

Power: It defines the output power of the laser. It can be from 0 to 100%. Generally, high power to cut thick materials and lower power to engrave and cut thin materials.

Speed: It decides the movement speed of the laser head. To engrave and cut thin material, the speed is usually set to the maximum.

Frequency (Hz, PPI): It specifies the number of laser pulses per second. For instance, wood cuts are best at 500 to 1000 Hz. For acrylic, 5000 to 20000 Hz is the minimum requirement.

Focus: There comes a focus lens inside the laser head. It should be on the surface of the material or slightly below for most of the applications. Make sure that materials are at a certain distance from the lens. The exact distance depends on the type of focus lens.

There are so many types of laser machines that come with a motorized bed. You can move up and down to set the focus distance. And the position of the material surface should be also manually adjusted.

Parts: Make sure you are using the best brand parts like Trumpf nozzles, Amada laser parts, etc. to get the most accurate results.

It’s time to cut!

Don’t worry, it can take a few tries to find the ideal settings for your material. Make sure you change only one parameter in a test process. For example, do not forget to write down your current settings for future reference.

With laser engraving and cutting system, there is one thing that comes as an absolute benefit: the speed. These systems render the fastest results to etch a pattern or cut the piece with the design. But when you have such a system in place, it is important to maintain efficiency otherwise it can hamper your overall growth. So, here are six hacks to help you with maximizing your Laser Production. 

1. Make a Batch

A basic thing to pay your attention to. When you print multiples at one time, it reduces production time. This can be possible in the cases when you require the same engraving or cutting on more than one item. When you engrave in batches, you can experience an increase of 37% in the time savings. When you are working in the batches, how many products would go in once depends hugely on the table size. You need to enlarge the page size in your graphic design program to match the full table size where you place your laser. In such cases, you can use a jig to space out the items. The output from any batch would be a result of using the right nozzle which includes a Trumpf nozzle or Precitec nozzles.

Adjusting Resolution

This is another factor to consider when you want to increase production. Especially in engraving jobs, it is important that the final image output is adequate. When you keep your DPI(Dots per inch) higher, it will take longer to engrave the item. And if your DPIs are higher, then the dots are going to be closer together. This will produce a detailed image, but it might take a bit longer time. If you lower your engraving resolution a bit, it can increase your time savings by 33% or more. The key here is to find the right combination of resolution and pattern which render achievable results with good quality in less time.

Color Mapping

Using color mapping can save your engraving time. For example, there is a design with three columns and in it, there are 30 names. At first, the laser will see it as one image and the laser head will travel over the white space columns to engrave the graphic. When you have a color mapping in place, it enables you to skip all the white space as it assigns each column a different color and an associated engraving order. This way, the laser will engrave one column at a time, traveling over white space. It will save you almost 43% time depending on the item you have put for the job. For better results of this technique, you can use a Trumpf nozzle or Precitec nozzles in the implementation.

Center engraving

This makes it easy to work with the various sized items, as you can create a custom template for each one. It allows the user to move the laser by hand to the center of the project. Set the center point as the new home position and the laser will utilize that point to properly place the graphic. Compared to other items it will save you a lot of time.

Pre-engrave Items

Customization is a great opportunity to give your business a new customer base. But singular jobs can prove to be very inefficient. Because if you load and produce the same design over and over in your engraving machine, it consumes a lot of your production time. To overcome this obstacle, you can pre-engrave and create an inventory of your popular items. This way you can just load pre-engraved material and save a lot of money & time.  Thus, pre-engraving can help you to engrave the same items in one go to decrease the production time. It becomes easy to pre-engrave the major graphics of the design onto a batch. Once the order comes in, you can simply use one of the pre-engraved boards back in the machine.

Using Job Manager

Using a job manager will help in keeping track of the regular jobs done in your laser machine. It becomes easy to streamline your laser processing workflow. It saves your time by giving you access to job time records, databases, status and more.

In a Nutshell

It is important to maximize your laser production for long-term production benefits. When it comes to laser machines, keeping these little things in place would help you eliminate unnecessary gaps in your system. Plus, an increased rate of the job will be your additional advantage.