The cost of a custom laser cut, engraved, and/or marked part is determined by how long it takes to process on our machines.
Here are some factors that affect the price of a laser-cut part:
- Laser cutting cost: The laser cutting charge is based on the time it takes to cut the parts, which depends on the material type and thickness. Up to 1/4" balsa thickness is $.75 per minute and 1/4" thick balsa is $1.25 per minute. Up to 1/4" ply thickness is $1.00 per minute and 1/4" thick ply is $1.50 per minute.
- Laser engraving cost: Raster engraving and vector engraving cost $.40 per minute.
- Material Cost: We may stock various plastics and woods you require (acrylic, ABS, Mylar, PETG, and styrene), which we normally sell by builder sheet bundles. You may also mail us your own material or have a supplier ship it to us directly.
- Shipping: We normally ship USPS Priority Flat Rates.
Optional charges:
- File creation: $25 per hour taking your paper plans and creating a cut sheet.
- Handling fee: Large or delicate parts that require custom packaging will incur a handling charge, which can range from $10 - $50.
- Exceptions: We do make exceptions to our minimums and pricing depending on the parts. If your parts are particularly simple to handle and cut, we will provide more competitive pricing. We are less likely to discount our rates if your parts are more difficult or risky to cut, such as:
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Single large or complex parts that take a long time to cut
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Parts that involve a lot of careful or tedious handling, which are more time consuming to verify and unload from our machines.
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Parts that have many small, sharp, acute angles and small details, which tend to melt back into the scrap plastic and become difficult to remove from the sheet.
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Parts that have many disjoined cuts (such as an array of small holes or a lace pattern), which take longer to cut since the laser cutting head has to stop and move from cut to cut more often than when it cuts along a continuous path.
Expediting costs for laser cutting
Our standard turn time is usually seven business days assuming you do not need many hundreds or thousands of parts. If you need the parts more quickly, we generally charge 20% more per expedited day. If you would like to expedite your parts, please specify your due date in the comments section of the quote request form.
File creation costs and submitting files for laser cutting
If you are not able to provide a vector-format file of your parts for laser cutting (DXF, DWG, or CDR file), we might be able to draw your part on our computer for you for $25 per hour.
To request a quote that includes a file, please submit a standard file type in the quote request form that communicates exactly the part you need. The file can be any file type that we can read, such as a text file with a written description, a scan of a hand sketch (JPG, GIF, BMP, PDF) or the actual cut sheet file with standard sheet sizes to fit our laser work space which is 36" x 24" and file format types Corel Draw .cdr and Autocad .dxf or .dwg.
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