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Wood Laser Cutting Service (USA)

Loracs

Loracs

Joined
Jul 11, 2023
Messages
419
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238

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!
 
Loracs said:
I will provide the boards and drawings
Click to expand...

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
 
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).
 
@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 simply 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.
 
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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.
 
My issue is one with space, I just can't fit a bandsaw + circular saw + thickness sander or a home laser cutter, for the matter. Makerspace is quite an intriguing idea I did not think of... It is worth looking around.
 
I have done it many times. I would just look for a local laser cutter on Google or whatever marketing site like Kijiji or Marketplace you have. There are lots of hobbyist and small businesses that do that kind of thing out of their basement.

In my experience it has been quite cheap and I usually wait while they cut the parts. It would take less than an hour to cut parts like what you would see in a typical medium sized kit.
 
maywiyj said:
I have done it many times. I would just look for a local laser cutter on Google or whatever marketing site like Kijiji or Marketplace you have. There are lots of hobbyist and small businesses that do that kind of thing out of their basement.

In my experience it has been quite cheap and I usually wait while they cut the parts. It would take less than an hour to cut parts like what you would see in a typical medium sized kit.
Click to expand...
Try your local trophy shop. Many have laser machines.
My local shop does my laser cutting at a reasonable price, usually based on minutes cut. For me less than dollar (U.S.) per minute.
He cuts my parts out of basswood, styrene and laser board. I furnish the cad drawings. He can cut from AutoCad, DXF, PDF, Coreldraw and Illustrator. Files must be vector based though and he can usually convert file formats if you have a different system.

I usually get my parts in several days, based on his work load.

I am assuming that any company with a laser machine can do the same.
 
There is a big difference between a laser engraver and a laser cutter. The machine i use will cut through 1 inch hardwood in one pass. Most of the small low power engravers need to make more than one pass and each pass burns a little more.
These are the machines i use and the cutting area is 4 ft x 8 ft

PM me and i will see what i can do

DSCN9330.JPGDSCN9331.JPG
 
To laser cut all the framing for a 1/4 scale frigate or a framed hull between 24 to 28 inches long is about $250.00

some of these parts are only .020 thousandths apart saving on wood, to close to cut by hand or with a scroll saw. To cut accurately every part is a long and skilled job but it can be done.

Capture frames.JPG
 
This is great information... thank you all. I'm watching this tread daily ;_)
 
The elephant in here with us is surely the existential question of whether you want to learn and challenge hand skills in the making, or cerebral skill in computing, CAD design tools and 2D software, historically correct rendition, or maybe just have quiet corner to enjoy sticking things together and tying knots?

Some of us don’t have enough time left to not take short cuts when available. Some of us may like to pay some apprentices to put in time shaping and cutting timbers. We all use the time of historians who did the research and made or found the drawings.

Me? In my head I’ll use my skill and knowledge, such as it is, to take a tree, convert the timber, use the time as it dries in the timber stack to draw out a ship, then measure and cut all the parts by saw and scalpel and template, and produce a miniature of a ship, accurate to the last trenail and seizing.
In fact, I may feel it advisable to save some time by hiring in a couple of experts and some of those electric apprentices owned by others to do the slog work.

As we say, each to his own. The pathways of life are beset by interesting calls on time, and wherever the diversions lead, time pours away at a steady rate until you allotted stock runs out.

J
 
Well said Jim. It’s comforting to realize that someone else faces the same time challenges that I do. Or: Do I have enough time allotted to me to finish this ambitious project that I am working on?

If I were 20 years younger would I embrace the electronic advances that many are using? I don’t know. But I’m not younger and do derive much satisfaction from building things the old fashioned way.

Roger
 
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