Looking for a small sized metal cutting laser

[Kev Williams]

Hi,
I am brand new to the whole laser game. Just purchased my first Laser cnc... a 6040 CO2 80 w reci... thinking I can do all kinds of cool things with it.

Now my wife wants to cut some metal name tags out of nikkel, copper, aluminum etc... and now I have the wrong machine....

If you just need to cut "tags", all you need is a small, decent cam-operated metal shear, like my old beast here--
shear.jpg
This thing cuts 20ga stainless, .062" thick brass and .094" aluminum with relative ease.

Pick up a cheap 1" belt sander from Harbor Freight and some different grit belts, you can reshape the tag, chamfer or round edges, and using the side of the belt it's amazing how much 'hand carving' you can do.

For less barbaric metal work, Dremel tool.

All for less than an average car payment, and no 3-phase power needed.

[Bill George]

You will need to sell a LOT of custom shaped nametags to pay for even good shear and belt sander. I have one of those 1 inch wide belt sander and I use it nearly everyday. I also have a decent 12 inch wide bench top shear I would hesitate to cut stainless with.
I would suggest doing a market survey before spending any large sum of money.

[Scott Shepherd]

So there you go, you need a fiber laser....wait.....no.....a waterjet.....wait....no...a CNC Router.......wait.....no.....a shear and belt sander There, simple, huh?

[Michael Henriksen]

The shear will cut blanks for tags but you still need something that will engrave them, either a cnc router or a laser engraver.

[Clark Pace]

Another option is a tag company may already have the sizes you need in anaodized alumijum. Then you can engrave them with your existing machine

[Pieter Swart]

6cS7-blue.jpg

This is what I was after... something to do this relatively quickly and inexpensive, yet still provide a decent quality alternative.

Any suggestions comments or advice?

[Chris J Anderson]

Brass deep engraving and colour filling - to do a nice job you probably need to go a bit expensive.

Tool engraving can also cut out the brass - i do it regularly.

[Scott Shepherd]

I small shear and a corner rounder would do that stuff all day long. http://www.accucutter.com/Index.html make great equipment. The stuff you show is very thin in order to be bent, so their stuff would work just fine for you. No need to buy anything else. The corner rounder can also do holes.

[Bill George]

A picture is indeed worth a 1,000 words on in this case two pages of posts. My 12 inch bench mounted $300 Shop Fox: shear, break, and roller combo will do that. Holes with a bench mounted heavy duty hole punch.

[Chris J Anderson]

Hey Bill could you post a pic of your setup ?

[Bill George]

All I have for now anyway is the Shop Fox shear, break, roller combo. Its Chinese and does need some (a lot of) fine tuning. Go to Amazon and do a search. I added a "real" squaring fence on the right side of mine.

> https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Fox-M105...shop+fox+break

This might work for very thin stainless holes > https://www.amazon.com/Neiko-02612A-...cm_wl_huc_item

[Chris J Anderson]

Thanks Bill....

[Pieter Swart]

Thanks Bill! I think this is the way to go!

[Bill George]

Please bear in mind, that shear/break/roller combo is not top of the line and the setup instructions are not really correct you will need to do the typical de-bugging and setup of Chinese machinery. Mine now I can cut a sheet of copy/ laser paper and it looks like it was cut with scissors. I use it to cut only thin brass sheet and aluminum sheet for tags. Nothing heavier. With the proper fence I fabricated and installed on the right side to replace the rinky dink one it cuts 100% square. Yes I have cut some thin stainless but not an everyday thing.

I have one of those hole punches ordered.

On the combo machine above I would have purchased the Grizzly http://www.grizzly.com/products/12-3...achine/T26472Z If it was in Stock as I think its a better made machine.