A great tip for engraving plastics or doing the tumblers you show in this video is to put a thin coat of dish soap on the surface before you engrave. It helps keep the soot from settling on the surface and makes cleanup afterwards a whole lot easier.
If you do wooden coasters, Finish them in a polyurethane or epoxy. I have had amazing luck with Zar solvent based polyurethanes. I have a couple test coasters I made, that I have been abusing for the last year. They have held up flawlessly, no surface degredation, I am constantly putting hot and cold items on it, leaving water on it ... etc. Been amazed at how well it has held up.
Thank you for the awesome video. I’m currently making ornaments for a local state college to give out. I definitely like selling local rather than on Etsy.
Personally I 3d printed bar taps with a screw insert in a small block of wood epoxies into the bottom for longevity. Made $6k from a single owner of 6 stores. Good money, just have to go visit the bar, talk with the owner and show him a product. If he likes it, it's a very easy sell. Especially if they can give you their store logo art work to put on the top. It's kind of branding the bar so to speak. That is my secret business lol, wasn't trying to advertise it but its ok, it's not original, just business
True, but you do what a lot of others may not, which is the active salesman role, going out and proactively seeking clientele. I have insane social anxiety and could never do that, so you def have that over many others, lol.
Just a heads up, QGIS is pronounced Q-Jiss. In my work I do a lot of geospatial mapping for vehicle automation and we use QGIS all the time. It's a great tool for map data.
@@makeorbreakshop I’ll take a Polar to ad to my DF0812-40BG K40 and Comgrow Z1 5W/10W. I’d even pay some for it. Just can’t afford the full price for my sprawling home-based small biz atm. If only… 👍 ce,😜😎🤓🧐😍🥳
Can you cut out copper plates? lets say up 3 mm? That would be awesome for making custom reusable copper sealings for cylinders , Engine casings,ecetera..
So far it seems to be pretty much the same machine as the Gweike Cloud (I think its coming from the same factory). And that's a good thing, both are a much cheaper and more capable version of a Glowforge!
I just wanted to make a note about leather, make sure you do NOT use just any leather, you need to use laser safe or vegitanned leather. Other leathers can contain Chromium and that's no bueno. Good video though!
I’d love to see the revenue and cost projections for some of these. Even crude estimates would be valuable, as the cost of engraving is only one part of this. Add in the cost of customer acquisition, shipping, returns, etc…all of this must be considered to determine if this is a hobby or a profit-generating business.
They do a good job in marketing, but we have specialized in making engraving machine products for nearly 10 years. Before XTOOL, Atom, and ORTUR, we were making such products. At the beginning, it was more to satisfy a small number of enthusiasts. Later, we found that our products can be improved more and get very good products according to the suggestions of enthusiasts, and gradually transformed into business cooperation, from liking to being more professional, more professional, and ultimately to have good products and customers. Good communication, but also to meet the different engraving and cutting needs and efficiency of more people.
So your bookmarks example shows a Hobbit or Lord of the RIngs map? Where and how do you go about getting permission to print that image? Isn't that a copy right issue?
I need to do a big video on pricing your work since a lot can go into it. To start out I would just look around online to see the range of prices people are offering for something similar. But it's also why I like going really specific and custom as well as local. You can usually charge more since the item is going to be more unique. Also you can just price it on materials+your time+profit margin and see if you get any sales to start.
@Make or Break Shop that is what I did when I had a craft business years ago but the competition of just crafters sold items without any cost of time and effort nor of any other Costs like equipment depreciation, electricity, etc. They just did it for "fun". All my work was unique.
I find literally the same designs and drawings all over. Researching petroglyphs in Southwest USA turned up two designs created by uncredited authors being sold on mugs, tshirts, woodcraft, metal craft, etc. by at least 10 different sellers... as their own work. This crap is rampant. I can find tshirts with readily available art work being sold at discount stores all over the metro. One guy on youtube publishes a design build, and viewers complain when he doesn't make dimensions or code available. When a creator does publish build files, code, etc., you can subsequently find that design being sold online as some douche's original work. Some people are actual creators. Everyone else seems to be ripoff artists.
Yeh the rip off of common designs is why I always push for people to do stuff that is customized to a specific person/location. On the map side of things be sure and check out QGIS, you can make it super custom to whatever you want.
I love the video! Do you know where I can find the video of you showing us how you made your maps? I’d love to make a map of my local area! I live in the middle of Wine Country! I think it would sell really well if done right.
I'm surprised that the stadium name could be considered copyrighted. It should be a double edge sword for companies to jam copyrighted words into stadium names. You get the "free" marketing for it, but anyone and anything should be allowed to reference the name for the descriptive nature. In other words, you shouldn't be allowed to use the Coca-Cola logo if you make a plaque for "Coca-Cola Park", but surely you should be able to reference it's name descriptively. I get that it might not be worth the bother, but if companies have this much power over which combination of letters a person can use, companies have even more power there than I feared.
Which device do you recommend for engraving gemstones like agate? Fiber laser or co2 or diode? also what is the minimum watts should i look for to engrave on gems?
I would honestly find someone with a laser and have them try stuff. Each material I've ever tried I end up having to try different settings and speeds. I'm fairly confident that a CO2 laser would work on gems considering they're similar to granite, marble, and concrete though they might be harder you could try going slower and at a higher power level. That's why I would say find someone who you can show some samples to and have them try stuff out for you. Who knows, some of those diode lasers might even be strong enough.
Engraving stuff is the easy bit. Running s successful business is HARD. My engraving business (operational for 13 years) took three years of 18-hours a day, 7 days a week to develop and become profitable - now serving corporate customers in 22 countries around the world. To infer that simply learning to laser engrave translates into a profitable business is disingenuous. It took me a couple of days to learn to engrave - and nearly 4 years before I saw a meaningful profit. Viewers need to know that making a kitschy trinket does not necessarily translate into a profitable business...
@@shaloon64 Basic business "rules" apply - no matter what one ventures into. The engraving industry is extremely competitive (my initial research into the UK market revealed some 2000 competitive businesses in engraving and related services - from the guy operating out of his garden shed selling on eBay, to large companies involved in sign-making). Most highstreet jewellers, key-cutters and shoe-repairers do engraving of one kind or other. Realising that the biggest opportunities lay in online selling, I spent hundreds of hours building and tweaking my websites (there were initially 5 sites, all configured to attract specific market sectors). I spent just over £50,000 on Google advertising in my first year, weighted across the 5 sites depending on market sector and potential average sale values. Constant monitoring and analysis of sales across each site started to show which sectors offered the best potential and at end of year 2, I culled 3 of the 5 sites and built 2 more focusing on industrial projects. (Get one order for £5000 is far better than 1000 orders for £5 each). Total focus on customer service, quality, attention to detail and LEARNING how to advise customers on fit-for-purpose solutions. I spent hundreds of hours polishing up on materials knowledge (metallurgy and plastics), best-practice engraving, faster bulk-engraving and automated engraving (eg: engraving unique codes on hundreds of tags automatically, by building software to bulk-engrave 500 tags automatically in one session). Win the customer - not the sale... Many of my corporate clients have been with me for 10 years, coming back time and again for both new and repeat business. Many recommend me to their own clients. I make myself accessible to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and if I hear the phone ring, I answer it - even at 3AM on a Sunday morning (which seldom happens, by the way). Over the years I have discovered what industries offer the best returns and have weeded out both products and customers that have low value and ROI. By year 4, through constant upgrading of web technologies, I featured more strongly on Google organic search, allowing me to cut back on adspend (now under £5,000 annually, from £50,000 at start). By focusing on high-value clients and industries and by offering knowledgeable solutions, customer trust is strong, and they come back to me time and time again - some orders are well into 5 figures...
You soups add a warning for using leather, the tanning process uses some serious toxic chemicals, including cyanide and arsenic.. hitting them with a laser is bad..
@@makeorbreakshop I’m looking into the 80watt version of the OMTECH and MONPORT 24x36 models with the chiller specked out but my only concern is that they both don’t come with the camera and I would like to get into making signs and I’m afraid the machine in your review might be a lil bit small in terms of the area it can cut/engrave . Please advise accordingly! Would appreciate it
So your first idea is to take a design from a copyrighted work? Come on... This is literally why Etsy is flawed. Tons of vendors stealing each others work and selling as their own. You mentioned copyrights at the end of the video but your first item has copyrighted material as well: "Tolkien's original drawings, paintings, maps, designs, scripts and other graphic works are protected by copyright and may not be copied".
Bookmark was the idea, I was just using the example of the Tolkien map since I had made that one for me. But you could totally use something like QGIS and create maps or real places into the bookmark form.
@@sinclairal to be fair, anyone that doesn't correlate "Lord of the Rings" and "Copyright Infringment" is probably too dumb to comprehend the final warning in the video and deserves whatever trouble they encounter lol
