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This 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 b
by russnewcomer 11y ago
This 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?
- jimant 11y agoGot it about the Trumpf! Of course we are reviewing every single design and approve/decline designs. We don't want unhappy reviews for sure but the "post-production editing" stuff we do saves the common gotchas of laser cutting. Can't wait to try us out - will definitely be there by Christmas (I guess you are in the States, right?)
- russnewcomer 11y agoUSA, yep. Glad to see that you've got all of the obvious wrinkles thought through and planned for. Here's hoping you have to buy a new laser soon!
- jimant 11y agohaha!! Thanks for the wish! Crossing fingers!
- fudged71 11y agoWhich nesting tool is that?
- jimant 11y agoMazak's own one :)