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Show HN: Lasergist.com – Your custom design in pure, laser-cut Stainless Steel
- jimant 11y agoAfter several months of fine-tuning our process, we are launching today as Lasergist. Lasergist is easy laser cutting for designers, engineers and anyone who can use Adobe Illustrator or Autocad. And we managed to make it cheap. AND provide free worldwide shipping. And it's 100% made in europe by Japan-made lasers (Mazak) and German/Swedish Stainless Steel. We are launching with a special 30% discount for HN! Just use the coupon HNSPECIAL
- LeeUmm 11y agoLooks great. A heads up though. On your discover page under the 'process' section, the design guideline link goes nowhere.
- jimant 11y agoThanks!! Let's fix this right now.
- jimant 11y agoChanged! Thanks for the heads up.
- tombrossman 11y agoYou should probably add HTTPS too, especially for the account login page. Since you are using CloudFlare you can add it for free and this is best practice.
- jimant 11y agoNoted and 100% agree with you. We'd go for Comodo most probably but we'll have a look at cloudflare too!
- iancarroll 11y agoLet's Encrypt launched; you can get free 90-day certificates automatically: https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/
- swah 11y agoGreat execution. You could just provide a bunch of samples that people can order right away! The designs in your photos, common names/signs...
- jimant 11y agoThat's a great idea! We can sure do this quickly.
- patrickfl 11y agoMaybe for people just looking to do plain text / fonts that can't do design in illustrator / CAD make a text box?
- jimant 11y agoMaybe a few stencil fonts would do the job but common fonts wouldn't work because of letters like R, P, etc. Noted however, sounds like a cool addition.
- matmann2001 11y agoYou don't see too many Mazaks in Europe. Where are you guys based?
- nona 11y agoJust a thought, but maybe it'd be nice to allow people to (optionally of course) mark their uploads as "OK for public use" – using a CC license or something. This way other visitors can see and maybe choose from a gallery of earlier designs. Even nicer would be if people could get a small discount in return…
- knicholes 11y agoThis is what cookiecaster.com does, and it's awesome.
- mgkimsal 11y ago"DYI fanatics"?
- jimant 11y agotoo cheesy right? let's change that!
- raisedbyninjas 11y agoMaybe use DIY.
- jimant 11y agoOMG - didn't notice it even after I read your comment.....
- cellularmitosis 11y agoImagine a world where, after prototyping something locally on your glowforge, you are then presented with a "order this from lasergist" single-click ordering button :)
- thoughtpalette 11y agoGood luck! I dig this emerging 3D printing/laser cutting model (Metal/Plastics). https://www.heroforge.com/ https://www.heroforge.com/ is one I dig as well.
- jimant 11y agoThanks! Interesting link too!
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoLooks great! Will you be offering sheet plastic and/or card too?
- jrowley 11y agoPonoko does laser cutting for all types of materials and 3D printing as well. https://www.ponoko.com/ https://www.ponoko.com/
- zokier 11y agoI'd be personally interested in aluminium (or other more lightweight material), but iirc cutting it is not so simple as steel.
- jimant 11y agototally another field.... and honestly we are not experienced or equipped properly to do aluminium cutting.
- tombrossman 11y agoAluminium is an excellent material for printing photos onto, and when I saw this it was the first thing I thought of. Too bad you don't offer that material yet because you could make some really cool art to hang on your wall which would look fantastic and last for a very long time. Here is one example of a supplier with a very limited selection of shapes: http://aluminyze.com/ http://aluminyze.com/ Now imagine having them print a big skyline photo of a city and shipping it to you to have the sky cut out. It would look pretty amazing, and generating the vector path wouldn't bee too difficult if the image had suitable contrast (or the object in silhouette).
- nsaje 11y agoThis looks really interesting, I'll try it out when I build my next Ergodox keyboard for a stainless steel case instead of acryllic!
- russnewcomer 11y agoThis is a great idea and I wish you guys success, I really do. I just hope your margins are high enough, or you're doing this on the side your company's main business, because your prices seem extremely low to me. (Also, Mazak over Trumpf?) I worked for a while (albeit approximately ten years ago now, but still) for a custom fab shop that did a lot of custom business with lasers (for industry, not consumer, generally), and I have a fair idea of the cost of lasers, the stainless you're using, and probable cost of development for the software toolchain you put together for this. And I hope you're using something like SigmaNEST or ProNest and not just chunking down rectangles for your parts, because that would help your costs considerably. It sounds like, from your description, that you are, and that you're using cutouts from other parts to do it, which will hopefully help your costs. And I would be worried about high-rework costs or low customer satisfaction due to heat issues from people who don't understand laser, or hole locations, etc, etc, etc? But you probably have already thought of all this, and don't need a random internet commenter to bring it all up. I had wanted to do something like this when I worked at the custom fab shop, but I didn't have the time to develop the toolchain necessary to do it all in 2005-7, so I guess I'm a little jealous. Good luck!
- jimant 11y agoThank you russnewcomer! Trumpf are great, based on our experience (~10 years owning and operating several lasers) Mazak have proven to be really reliable and really low-cost in operating kW + maintenance. That's why we kept the Mazaks. Of course we are using a nesting program that's been leaving something close to 200-300 grams. per stainless steel sheet - and this is the core of our low cost. We tried to explain it as much as possible and give a couple of rules that would save a lot of people from the high heat stuff. It looks that you know a lot regarding lasers and you are more than welcome to stay in touch! Jim
- russnewcomer 11y agoSince you're European, I just wanted to tweak you on Mazak v Trumpf. :) Again, not telling you how to run your business, but I think you may face a large number of unhappy customers because of poor understanding of how laser cutting actually works. I hope someone is manually reviewing parts before you make them, because it would be bad overall if a LaserGist customer's one-off bad part path caused issues on your other parts, presumably for more regular, high volume clients. Really, good luck! I just may order something in the near future. Ships by Christmas?
- johansch 11y agoWhere is the pricing? Edit: After a bunch of clicking around, I realized I have to initiate an order to figure that out. And I need to provide material, thickness, X*Y dimensions, path length, and a couple of extras to get to hopefully get an estimate. My feedback: please give me some pricing examples early on. Make it prominent on the start page. Like photos of 2-3 objects, what they cost to make, and what their respective parameters are.
- jimant 11y agoHi Johansch, Your comments and experience are very appreciated. As another user pointed this out too, we'll prepare a small example list to be easier to understand pricing. We are practically focusing on quality but we are doing our best to keep costs low for everyone.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y agoThe path length estimate is a bit onerous. You should just compute it server side after the file is uploaded and let the user know what it is and how it affects the final price.
- jimant 11y agoYeap - It would be really nice to be this way but developing such a feature like "auto-quoting" would really increase the costs. It might be a little bit counter-intuitive at the moment, but hopefully we'll be developing this soon.
- davefp 11y agoIt seems unnecessary to ask for the dimensions and path length, could those not be extracted from the template uploaded in the second step?
- anoother 11y agoI disagree a little; sometimes you just want a quick ball-park quote and having to upload a file (which you may not have drawn yet) is an instant turn-off.
- jimant 11y agoThat's one, and most importantly, developing this kind of feature "auto-quoting" would raise our costs, and in turn the price. Hopefully, with more orders coming in, we will develop this too. Appreciate the feedback though!
- napsterbr 11y agoWould love to see some more examples/photos
- jimant 11y agoWe'll probably make some on our own as we don't feel comfortably sharing clients' designs without approval. For those however that do want to share their parts' photos we provide discount for their next order.
- jrowley 11y agoI could have used something like this last year. Looks awesome!
- jimant 11y agoThanks! Hope you'll need it again soon!
- vibrolax 11y agoFrom: http://lasergist.com/design-guidelines/ http://lasergist.com/design-guidelines/ Depending on your design, the engraving position will have a tolerance of +- 3mm. Is this engraving position registration tolerance correct, or a typo? If +/- 3 mm is correct, then it would certainly rule it out for my application (control panels)
- anoother 11y agoJust ask for a sheet 6mm wider & taller than you want, and draw a 3mm rectangle around your actual design, centred within it...
- zokier 11y agoThat might work for really simple stuff, but at that point what's the point of using laser cutting with 0.01mm precision?
- jimant 11y agoWell the engraving tolerance is actually placement tolerance and it's a little bit exaggerated. We have seen so complex parts that it's impossible to have it engraved perfectly. Normally, we overlay the actual product outline including the engraving design and it's aligned perfectly. For your application (control panels) sounds to be extremely easy to be perfect. You can drop us a line at hello@lasergist.com and discuss in detail.
- pyrocat 11y agoCan you ship in time for the holidays?
- chromaton 11y agoGood luck on this. The design looks slick, though I wasn't able to get past the quoting page. If you want other materials and thicknesses, try us out at http://www.bigbluesaw.com/ http://www.bigbluesaw.com/ . For prices see http://www.bigbluesaw.com/examples http://www.bigbluesaw.com/examples .
- Zanta 11y agoI've used BigBlueSaw as well as some local makerspaces for my waterjet and lasercut needs in the past, and I've been happy with their services. Where does your business fit within that marketplace? Is your advantage pure cost (which I'm impressed with by the way, a $12 shipped part is ridiculous)
- Caprinicus 11y agoSeems like they have much smaller limits on part size compared to big blue saw. Seems like they are mostly targetting hobbyist/art stuff. 300mmx300mm is too large a limitation for bulk work.
- jimant 11y agoBulk work still goes through more traditional channels - like inquiring/quoting etc. The actual limitations are 1500mm x 3000mm ;)
- Zanta 11y agoI used BigBlueSaw for making frames and parts for some robots I built for fun. They fill a nice gap in that they serve hobbyists but can work with materials and sizes that support beefy, industrial style designs. Conventional machine shops won't give me the time of day due to small quantities and non-recurring orders. Anyhow, I went home last night and knocked together a little cutting template for some hobby leatherworking I do. At $30 CAD shipped, it's hard to resist trying it out. If I'm happy with the result I'll share the site and template on some leatherworking forums - those guys are always looking for easy ways to build templates. Good luck with your launch.
- chromaton 11y agoThanks for the referral. What kind of projects did you do?
- tomkinstinch 11y agoThis is great, and the site is beautiful! I'll probably use it in the future for crafty/technical projects. A few questions: 1. I understand the cost is probably based on many factors, like bounding box size, laser time, and material, but it would be helpful to see a table of example items on the home page and their final costs (just to have a ballpark idea of what it would cost to make something of a given size/complexity). For the estimator/order form, why do I need to specify the bounding box size and path length myself? Shouldn't that be inferred from the drawings I upload? All that said, the prices are amazing! 2. Do you ship to the US? If so, does that cost extra? 3. Can you cut steel thinner than 1mm? It would be VERY useful to be able to make steel foil templates for reflow soldering. Such templates act as masks to control the application of solder, and they vary in thickness depending on the application but are most commonly 0.1mm to 0.2mm in thickness. Made by specialty firms, such templates can cost hundreds of dollars. A DIY option would be wonderful. 4. Can you make parts <50mm^2? 5. Your cut edges probably look great. It would be nice to see macro photos of some cut edges to know what sort of quality to expect. 6. What are the tolerances of cut parts? 7. Have you considered merging some of the pages, like the home page and the Discover page? Possibly the design guidelines page? I had to click around quite a bit to answer some other questions I had.
- jimant 11y agoThanks Tom! 1) This is what another user commented too - having some examples - we'll definitely create a few asap. And regarding the auto-estimation, developing an automated cost-estimating thing would really raise our costs. Let's hope lasergist becomes better and larger soon, and this is number one feature to be developed! 2. Yes we do at no extra cost. And it usually takes no more than a week to arrive to east coast. 3. This sounds like a great idea to try out. With our cutting lasers no, we cannot do this because of heat. But the engraving lasers might be able to do this easily. I'll get back to you about this. 4. Yes - but we wouldn't be very happy to say it nicely. The reason is that too small parts will fall from the honeycomb flatbed and will require some digging below...
- tomkinstinch 11y agoThanks for the quick answers. It sounds like you're on track to do well. I wish you success. 1. Feel free to get in touch if you need help with an auto cost-estimator. 2. Amazing!
- michaelbuddy 11y agoHow about where it says path length maybe provide the help hint actually show how you can get it from illustrator or inkscape or wherever else you think customers are working from. I've been using vector software for 15 years and I don't think I've ever looked at path length in properties. I'm in the info palette right now with a couple small paths selected, is a plugin required for that information?
- jimant 11y agoNo plugins at all. Just open DOCUMENT INFO palette, select object from the drop down and select your paths. The path length will be shown on that palette.
- exabrial 11y agoIs there an option for "unpure" stainless steel? Haha... just kinda funny headline
- jimant 11y agoHmmm... With the suppliers currently in the world? You bet there is!!
- nikkwong 11y agoI'm sorry--but what do people really plan on doing with these if you can't get them any thicker than 3mm?
- jimant 11y agoAllow me to say that 3mm thick stainless steel is a great thickness for tons of really heavy duty applications. Thicker is an option, and we regularly do cut up to 6mm but we do this only for custom orders as this would really make handling, shipping and packaging become more expensive. If you need thicker or larger parts, just ask!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- patrickfl 11y agoAlso interested in sample pricing, would also like to see some sample designs. This would be really cool to do logos for doors etc at engineering and design firms.
- jimant 11y agoDo you mean having some ready samples that you can order or just plain pics? This is already on its way to be done quickly. Thanks for your comment.
- Pranz 11y agoOn a non-retina screen, the font weight of 100 looks not so great. I'd recommend to use a media query to check the DPI. When I saw "Discover" I expected some examples. Your product is intriguing, but I don't think there are that many people that will go "Oh, now I can finally make <insert object>". HAving some examples would be a great way to show what can be done and inspire your customers.
- jimant 11y agoIn fact, there is a media query checking for this and changing the font weight to 300. Actually it makes it 100 for retina screens. It's tested and works in several devices - let's check if there is any error in loading the 300 font weight from google fonts though - thanks for the tip. Your comment on examples is very correct and we've been advised at least 3 more times here; we are definitely doing this soon! Thank you again for your comments.
- dysfunction 11y agoI have no idea what I'd make with this, but knowing I could have something made this way is awesome :) Minor grammatical error: "How it works?" is not valid English. Instead this could be "How it works:", "How it works" (with the colon implied) or "How does it work?"
- jimant 11y agohaha! Definitely feel you! Thanks for the heads up - changed :)
- orbifold 11y agoSo here is something I want to happen in the future: You create a CAD design in some open source language making use of parametrised component libraries. You then dispatch the manufacture, assembly and delivery to providers that specify their capabilities via an API, the final product is delivered to your doorstep. This service is one step towards this, but ideally eventually almost everything would be automated away.
- jimant 11y agoWe are totally in! Totally irrelevant maybe but SVG is a great file format for this. Food for thought i guess..
- jonnycowboy 11y agoGreat work, I've hoped for a website like yours to come out! Like others I've used Big Blue Saw but it's fairly expensive. I recently got parts cut locally (laser cut steel, 16ga) and it's around 20-25$/part (30$/part shipped locally). From what I can gather from your site for others to reference: - free shipping anywhere - 300x300 max size - 1.5mm: 18.09$ per sheet + 6.96$/1000mm of path length - 2mm: 22.95$ per sheet + 7.87$/1000mm of path length - 3mm: 32.97$ per sheet + 9.90$/1000mm of path length By the way, those prices, per sheet are less than mcmaster sells!! Only things I would add: 1- add a stainless steel PCB Stencil service (very thin - 0.125mm, but may be not accurate enough?) 2- change max dimensions to 500x300mm (increase of 200mm on one dimension) or 432x300mm (so it would fit in 11x17" envelope).
- jonnycowboy 11y agoI mention this because I think I see a revolution coming (laser cut steel sheet) for robotics, 3d printer designs, etc as the manufacturing costs will be so low it does not make sense to buy the raw materials and mill/drill yourself.
- jimant 11y agoIn case you are looking for a job, you're hired! haha.. Remarkable comment.... PCB stencil service is something we'll have to try out with the engraving machines - the laser cutters are too powerful for such thin sheets. The max. standard dimensions might be soon changed. (we can already provide larger parts in custom applications)
- pjc50 11y agoIf you do do a PCB stencil service, it would probably make commercial sense to partner with a PCB house both for tech tips and lead generation.
- jimant 11y agoadditionally, I personally believe that what you say is absolutely correct. From a manufacturer's point of view, costs can be low. It's demand + optimisation that keeps them low.
- kragen 11y agoWhat are the tolerances and surface quality? More importantly, what do they depend on? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10691293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10691293 asked this already and you didn't answer, but this is the #1 most important issue for whether this is a useful service for other than decorative purposes.
- jimant 11y agoYeap - i noticed that I didn't reply like 10 min ago. The tolerances based on the laser specs are 0.01mm. It is in essence extremely precise. Regarding the surface quality I think that a few photos would be the greatest way to showcase it. What is important to understand is that we are providing industrial level parts + quality, but we do this through a process that is easy for designers, engineers and people unfamiliar with laser cutting. Definitely not just "decorative"..
- rm445 11y agoYou should put up some tech specs. Positional tolerance, profile tolerance, edge breaks, plate flatness, surface roughness specs (polished and unpolished). It doesn't need to be marketing speak: as you say it's a precise process and I think the average person would be blown away by what's routinely achieved. While people looking for non-decorative items may well really need the information. P.S. Ideas for future features you may wish to offer: - Laser etching (different machine, but ties in with the general business idea). - Bending! Even at a simple level it would let people make accurate cases, brackets and sculptures from the pieces.
- jimant 11y agoActually we already provide laser engraving as an option! Bending is something another member mentioned a few minutes ago. This is an option for custom orders but I'm not sure that it can be "streamlined" in a relatively bug-less process - at least for a consumer client.
- kragen 11y agoIs that 10μm repeatability or precision? Does it take into account the surface roughness (i.e. the surface roughness plus positioning error is less than 10μm) or is it just the positioning error? How much does your kerf width vary?
- welder 11y agoCould one make the missing lockpicks from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-open-locksport https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-o... with this?
- jimant 11y agoI'm not really sure (have 0 knowledge on lock picks) but if those are flat 1 / 1.5 / 2 / 3 mm thick, then why not?!
- tlrobinson 11y agoNeat. I'd definitely use this, except I need a little longer than 300 mm in one direction (for a panel to fit in a Pelican 1450 case)
- jimant 11y agoJust drop us a line at hello@lasergist.com or http://lasergist.com/contact http://lasergist.com/contact
- Ruphin 11y agoFrom the Discover page: "Every year our lasers travel about 2 million kilometers." That calculates to 228 km/h, which seems impossible, unless you are reporting the total distance travelled by all your lasers added together. However, the wording you chose implies that each laser travels that distance individually. Compare: "Every day the cells in your body travel about 2 billion kilometers". This statement sounds very strange, but is technically correct (more or less) if you add up the distances travelled by each cell. Still a cool factoid though :)
- jimant 11y agoOf course we are talking about all of our lasers combined!!
- compumike 11y agoHow wide is the kerf (laser beam width)? Does your CAM software offset for the kerf on your end? Or should the user add offsets to the design file?
- jimant 11y agotoo technical detail I think but anyway, yes it is compensated on our side!
- compumike 11y agoThanks. For artistic uses, yes it's too technical. But for mechanical design, it seems like an important piece of information. If it is compensated on your side, you're right, I don't necessarily need to know the exact width -- but please put the fact that it is compensated on your website. Would also be helpful to know for the internal corner radius of a nominally square internal corner.
- chromaton 11y agoIt's important when you're making thin slots or need to know the roundness of inside corners.
- jimant 11y agonoted - I see that another user too asks for more technical details so we'll add those on the website directly.
- richardkeller 11y agoThis is really great. I wonder if something like this exists for perspex or acrylic? I've been trying to find somewhere I can get custom coloured acrylic cut to specific shapes. What really appeals to me about Lasergist is the worldwide shipping. Now if only I could find someplace that does the same for acrylic.
- pjc50 11y agoe.g. RazorLab: http://www.razorlab.co.uk/ http://www.razorlab.co.uk/ - also do card and felt. They have a particularly nice page of reference photos of all the available materials, so you can see what it might look like: http://www.razorlab.co.uk/materials/info/?id=181 http://www.razorlab.co.uk/materials/info/?id=181
- dbcooper 11y agoI assume that this has cost advantages over machining. The feature sizes are quite unimpressive: >Minimum hole sizes depending on stock thickness >Try to avoid designing too small holes as it might be impossible for the laser to cut through. Keep a note of the following: 1.0mm minimum hole diameter: 3.5mm 1.5mm minimum hole diameter: 4.0mm 2.0mm minimum hole diameter: 5.0mm 3.0mm minimum hole diameter: 6.5mm
- RyJones 11y agothis is a shortcoming of laser cutters. On material under 6.5 mm thick, there isn't enough thermal mass to soak up the heat you need to put a small hole all the way through. With birch, it catches on fire. With steel, it melts and looks bad. The advantages are primarily no tooling, no jigs, no setup. No clamps, even, if you want to play fast and loose. Where it loses to traditional methods is production - on quantity a handful, laser cutters are great. When you need Q144 or Q1000 you need to look at stamping or die cutting.
- jimant 11y ago100% agree with you. It's exactly like that.
- ridgeguy 11y agoWhat is the stainless steel alloy #? (304, 316, etc.)
- jimant 11y agoIt's 304 in shiny and 316 in brushed - see here: http://lasergist.com/discover http://lasergist.com/discover
- Buetol 11y agoI think shapeways nailed it by having also a gallery so people who don't know how to design can buy cool stuff. That's something I haven't really found for now in laser cutting/engraving, a good gallery.
- chromaton 11y agoWith the size and capabilities of your laser, I'd strongly advise looking into the jewelry making market. There's a lot we can't do at Big Blue Saw because we're using waterjet or low-powered laser. I'm not sure what materials you can cut, but look into copper, brass, silver, etc.
- jimant 11y agoThank you very much for this recommendation. At the moment we're only doing stainless steel, as this is the main material we focus on, have developed finishing techniques and in general, this is the material we are most experienced in. I can easily see jewellery being made of Stainless Steel though. Just drop as a line at hello@lasergist.com - maybe we can discuss on the jewellery market!
- zilian 11y agoI would like to order one of these two open-source designs as Christmas gifts (doesn't matter if they're a bit late) : http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:359145 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:359145 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:389075 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:389075 Could you help me out ? How to fill the informations before uploading the files, if they are compatible ? I'm quite a beginner with these software and I only use linux distro... However I'm eager to learn. Also, how will I/you make sure the tree is not too fragile ? Thanks !
- jimant 11y agoGreat news everybody! You asked for a quick-to-order sample; we just made a cool christmas-special sample available for immediate dispatch! check it out: http://lasergist.com/ http://lasergist.com/ and click on "get a sample"!