Wood burning, engraving, cutting etc.

[Justin]

I've often seen folk selling custom cut wood, jigsaw pieces, keyrings and so on with personalisation. What do they use to do this? I assume some sort of CNC machine unless they buy blanks and burn/laser themselves?

Interested to see setup costs to do this.

I've seen all the usual cheap'ish Chinese laser machines and wondered if I should just dive in

[Justin]

OK, so I see a 50w laser will cut through 1/4 inch of wood, sounds good.

[Mrteajunkie]

I have been down the CNC route and it's great fun i only had a small machine but damn it was great.
I used to make dog lead holders and sold them on etsy for £15 a go and i couldn't keep up with orders.

i never made anything else as there were so many orders of the lead holders.
Then i started with my graphtec and never looked back.

[Justin]

So what machine did you use for the CNC? Did you do engraving etc?

[Mrteajunkie]

Yes i engraved the dog(s) names into the item and i made dog tags too but that used a diamond tip engraving bit. I cant remember what it was called but it was springy and expensive.
The one i had was only a small Chinese 40x60 bed not a large format machine.

I would 100% buy another one it was great fun.
I can probably find some pictures of the lead holders i used to make.

Heres similar to what i had.

[pw66]

Like anything else Chinese made (without UK support) - can you afford to replace it at short notice if it goes wrong?
Worse case scenario is that you stretch yourself to buy the machine, it goes wrong just as you are starting to earn some money from it and you have to choose between buying again or write it off as a bad job.
If you have some spare cash to dip your toe then give it a go.

[froggy]

There is a great deal of competition in the "engraved" space. When there is a lot of competition margins get squeezed as sellers compete for the same customers. That being said, well designed good quality product will always give better than average margins. The hard bit is selling enough to make it pay.

Cheap "Chinese" lasers are good for commercial cutting, provided the bed size and power are there. Engraving profitably requires more expensive "western" machines. Trying to find unique blanks to process is the tough bit now as so many "personalisation businesses" have a cheap laser and are looking for lines. Like anything online the good lines get copied. There are products designed by us from 3 years ago that are now virtually the accepted design blank this xmas (aint life a bitch!).

Another option may be for someone with the right setup and costs to make designs for you. Good luck.