
Show HN: Lasergist.com – Your custom design in pure, laser-cut Stainless Steel - jimant
http://lasergist.com
======
johansch
Where 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
Hi 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
The 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
Yeap - 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.

~~~
Palomides
not having an automated/instant quote system totally kills my interest in
this; compare with ponoko or big blue saw, upload a design and it will very
easily give exact prices for your design on various materials.

~~~
jimant
Understood and well noted. If i'm not mistaken though, those services have
their own software and some very specific guidelines to follow.

~~~
beardicus
You mean their own design software? You are mistaken. Ponoko provides
templates of their default material sizes, and that's about all that's
required. Oh, you also need to use the correct color path to indicate between
engrave and cut passes.

Either way, clearly you're already calculating this value for billing, no? Or
are you just using laser run-time for the bill, and estimating that based on
the user's guesstimated path length?

------
jimant
After 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

~~~
swah
Great execution. You could just provide a bunch of samples that people can
order right away! The designs in your photos, common names/signs...

~~~
jimant
That's a great idea! We can sure do this quickly.

~~~
paxtonab
Put some examples of past orders up on your discover page!

~~~
jimant
Others suggested this too! Wouldn't do this without permission, so assuming
that we launched today and first orders will start shipping Wednesday - maybe
by next week we can have some designs featured!

------
jonnycowboy
Great 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
I 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
In 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
If 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.

------
tomkinstinch
This 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
Thanks 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...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
4\. The laser cutter I operate for my day job (4kW fibre laser) solves this
problem with a feature called 'micro tabs' which leaves a small uncut section
in the laser path. Parameters are tab length plus minimum and maximum spaces
between tabs.

Of course, you then have to break the part free and clean up the micro tab
with a file - so more labour intensive, but 99.9% of our customers are
industrial so we typically leave that to them.

~~~
jimant
The Mazaks we have don't have this option but the engraving one does have
something similar. You raise a huge point here: industrial vs consumer. There
are so many things that consumer-level clients won't be satisfied with.

------
russnewcomer
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
Thank 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
Since 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
Got 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
USA, 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
haha!! Thanks for the wish! Crossing fingers!

------
kragen
What 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
Yeap - 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
You 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
Actually 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.

------
Pranz
On 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
In 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.

------
chromaton
Good 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) .

------
Buetol
I 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.

------
patrickfl
Also 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
Do 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.

------
michaelbuddy
How 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
No 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.

------
Zanta
I'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
Seems 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
Bulk work still goes through more traditional channels - like
inquiring/quoting etc. The actual limitations are 1500mm x 3000mm ;)

~~~
Zanta
I 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
With 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
Thank 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!

------
dysfunction
I 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
haha! Definitely feel you! Thanks for the heads up - changed :)

------
zilian
I 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 !

------
thoughtpalette
Good 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
Thanks! Interesting link too!

------
Ruphin
From 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
Of course we are talking about all of our lasers combined!!

------
cellularmitosis
Imagine a world where, after prototyping something locally on your glowforge,
you are then presented with a "order this from lasergist" single-click
ordering button :)

------
orbifold
So 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
We are totally in! Totally irrelevant maybe but SVG is a great file format for
this. Food for thought i guess..

------
vibrolax
From: [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
Just ask for a sheet 6mm wider & taller than you want, and draw a 3mm
rectangle around your _actual_ design, centred within it...

~~~
zokier
That might work for really simple stuff, but at that point what's the point of
using laser cutting with 0.01mm precision?

~~~
jimant
Well 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.

------
dbcooper
I 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
this 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
100% agree with you. It's exactly like that.

------
jimant
Great 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"!

------
richardkeller
This 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
e.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)

------
welder
Could one make the missing lockpicks from
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-
by-o...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-open-
locksport) with this?

~~~
jimant
I'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?!

------
compumike
How 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
too technical detail I think but anyway, yes it is compensated on our side!

~~~
chromaton
It's important when you're making thin slots or need to know the roundness of
inside corners.

~~~
jimant
noted - I see that another user too asks for more technical details so we'll
add those on the website directly.

------
davefp
It seems unnecessary to ask for the dimensions and path length, could those
not be extracted from the template uploaded in the second step?

~~~
anoother
I 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
That'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!

------
tlrobinson
Neat. 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
Just drop us a line at hello@lasergist.com or
[http://lasergist.com/contact](http://lasergist.com/contact)

------
nsaje
This looks really interesting, I'll try it out when I build my next Ergodox
keyboard for a stainless steel case instead of acryllic!

------
napsterbr
Would love to see some more examples/photos

~~~
jimant
We'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.

------
exabrial
Is there an option for "unpure" stainless steel? Haha... just kinda funny
headline

~~~
jimant
Hmmm... With the suppliers currently in the world? You bet there is!!

------
jrowley
I could have used something like this last year. Looks awesome!

~~~
jimant
Thanks! Hope you'll need it again soon!

------
ridgeguy
What is the stainless steel alloy #? (304, 316, etc.)

~~~
jimant
It's 304 in shiny and 316 in brushed - see here:
[http://lasergist.com/discover](http://lasergist.com/discover)

------
TheOtherHobbes
Looks great!

Will you be offering sheet plastic and/or card too?

~~~
zokier
I'd be personally interested in aluminium (or other more lightweight
material), but iirc cutting it is not so simple as steel.

~~~
jimant
totally another field.... and honestly we are not experienced or equipped
properly to do aluminium cutting.

~~~
tombrossman
Aluminium 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).

------
pyrocat
Can you ship in time for the holidays?

~~~
jimant
Absolutely yes. Where are you located so I can confirm this?

~~~
pyrocat
Seattle, WA

~~~
jimant
I'd say that yes. I don't think that the christmas post congestion would
affect it if ordered soon.

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mgkimsal
"DYI fanatics"?

~~~
jimant
too cheesy right? let's change that!

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Maybe use DIY.

~~~
jimant
OMG - didn't notice it even after I read your comment.....

------
nikkwong
I'm sorry--but what do people really plan on doing with these if you can't get
them any thicker than 3mm?

~~~
jimant
Allow 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!

