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In: Laser Cutters & Engravers

I’ve rearranged my 1500 square foot shop four times in three years, and I finally stopped breaking my shins on the CNC table. Why Layout Actually Matters Most people set up their shop based on where the electrical outlets are. I did that too. Then I spent six months walking back and forth between the laser and the computer like an idiot because I didn’t think about workflow. Good layout isn’t about making your shop look clean for Instagram. It’s about cutting down the number of times you have to carry a 4×8 sheet of plywood across the room or hunt for a tape measureKEEP READING →

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In: Laser Cutters & Engravers

You are not a charity, and your shop is not a hobby fund. Why This Matters I see makers do this constantly. They charge $25 for something that took three hours to make, used $12 in material, and required a $15,000 laser to produce. Then they wonder why the shop never pays for itself. You need to set real goals and actual quotas. Not what other makers “allow” or “accept” in their Facebook groups. Not what someone on Etsy is willing to race to the bottom for. What you need to earn per hour to make this worth your time. I learned this the hardKEEP READING →

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In: Laser Cutters & Engravers

Buy the machine that matches what you actually want to make, not the one that sounds cooler. Why this matters I get asked this all the time. Someone walks into the shop, sees both my CO2 and fiber lasers running, and wants to know which one they should buy first. The answer is always the same: what are you planning to cut or engrave today, not six months from now when you might be doing something different. The internet makes this decision worse than it needs to be. You’ll read that fiber is the future or that CO2 is dead or that you need both.KEEP READING →

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In: Laser Cutters & Engravers

I got tired of watching people buy a laser and then spend three months trying to figure out how to make money with it. The gap nobody talks about You unbox a Monport. You follow the manual. You run the test file. Then what? The manual tells you how to turn it on. It does not tell you how to align mirrors when your cuts look like garbage. It does not explain why air assist matters or how to set it for different materials. It definitely does not walk you through your first paying job. So you end up in Facebook groups asking the sameKEEP READING →