Wood Laser Cutting Service (USA)

[Loracs]

Greeting, I'm slowly considering "scratch" building. Having little experience and mostly no equipment, I'm considering outsourcing wood laser cutting from CAD drawing. Would anyone having used such service? quality service where I will provide the boards and drawings. Mostly something affordable for a full POF project. If it will cost 2-3x the price of a kit.... there not much a point. Thanks for your input!

 

[AllanKP69]

I will provide the boards and drawings

Will the boards that you provide already be the thickness that you want? It still might be cheaper to buy a good quality used scroll saw, print the drawings of the parts on label paper. stick the label paper on the wood and saw out the parts. If it is cheaper to farm it out to a cutting service, I would love to learn more as well. The time is fast coming that this kind of thing would be something I might want to try.
Allan

 

[JacquesCousteau]

I haven't tried ordering laser-cut parts. Depending on where you live, you may want to check if a library nearby has a makerspace with a laser cutter. I was able to go to one, and they showed me how to use the software (lightburn) and laser cutter for free. They were very friendly and helpful. All I had to do was provide my own wood and convert the drawings into lightburn files. The whole process took a couple days (although I was just re-scaling an existing POB kit--something more complex might take longer).

 

[Roger Pellett]

SOS member Dave Stevens, aka The Lumberyard offers this service and provide any type of wood that you might want to use.

ROger

 

[Na Daeyong's Apprentice]

@Loracs I remember looking into that myself about a year or two back. If memory serves, it did come out quite a bit higher priced than a typical kit. @JacquesCousteau made a good point in checking in local spaces (though I didn't know public libraries had them available. Thanks for the tip!)

My approach was to simplu use sheets of thin basswood that I could shape with a hobby knife. It's not perfect, but for framing that would be covered in planks anyway, it was a simple, affordable option.

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

When did using a coping saw and a gang plank become so unthinkable?

I admit that I cheat. A Formosan 9" bandsaw that MM offered and later dropped. I added a Carter Stabilizer - which cost about as much as the saw. With a 1/4" Olson blade it has no problem with 1/4" Hard Maple. It pretty much cuts as fast as I can keep up with it. All this providing that I keep wood chips from binding the blade.