Quick gifts

[Injuneer]

The wife and I have been having fun making quick little tchochkes which have become quite popular at her workplace. Sometimes she gifts them, and other times they are commissioned pieces. For those which we charge for, the profit margin is fairly decent; at least enough for a good steak dinner. And they don't take all that long to make.

[twistsol]

What type of laser to you have? I've been looking at the Epilog systems and the woodworking shows for years, but I'm too cheap to pull the trigger.

[capncarl]

Those are neat! How hard is it to engrave the pen?

[Injuneer]

Thanks a bunch!
We use a 15W (advertised) 450nM Chinese special on our Shapeoko 2. I've got things set up so that it's a 5 minute job to switch between the rotary spindle (router) and the laser. It can't do some of the things that the 40W and above CO2 lasers can do, and it doesn't work as fast as those higher power ones, but it does this type of stuff quite nicely. We especially enjoy having the ability to do both laser and CNC routing / milling all in one package. Having the ability to do traditional woodworking along with computer assisted woodworking and finishing really makes the hobby more flexible and enjoyable for us.
The pen is straight forward to engrave, and the depth of focus for the laser is good enough so that I didn't need to build a rotary adaptor for doing them, but I likely will in the future so that I can do larger diameter objects. We simply put the pen in a set of vee blocks and let 'er rip. As is the case with most stuff, the software is what makes or breaks the setup, and thankfully we have found everything to do this type of work available in open source / free software.