Alex
11-05-2010, 04:53 PM
This is a thread to share your laser engraving experiences, and read about experiences other engravers are having. Remember your customer may not just be the individuals walking into your store, it could be a real estate office, a car dealership, a local school, church, or civic organization. Here are some posts from the old forums to get you started!
Yesterday a gentleman stopped in to purchase 35 ZSQS's for a conference. We helped design the layout and within a day had all the magnets engraved and ready for pickup.
-Joe Knutson
We've had a couple decent ones... We just had the chaplain from a local hospital come in and pick up the 42 magnets he ordered to give out monthly inserted in birthday cards. They were ovals we vectored from the alder wood and had the chaplain's definition/paraphrase of what a "chaplain" is and what a "volunteer" is. He was quite happy.
For a while, keychains were working really well for us as promotional items. We'd engrave a customer's company name and information on one side and offered to personalize the back for each of his clients at no extra cost. So he gave them out, and they'd come in to have their name put on the other side, generating more traffic in the store and more advertising for the laser program. These were excellent and we had a couple different customers doing this... but unfortunately the keychains we were using were discontinued and we no longer have something simple yet still nice looking that can be engraved on both sides...
We also did 12 ZCRY01s for an auto dealer. He sent us an email with his company's "core values" and we engraved them on the crystal.. That was a probably the easiest one; all that was needed was to set the file up once and change the piece out for a new one... 13 times and the order was done!
The best one however was for a customer who ordered 56 pen boxes (ZBXS). The customer wanted a different name for each set, but that really wasn't that difficult. Taking advantage of email, we just had the customer send us a spreadsheet with the names, and then we just copied and pasted. So no risk of typos! We engraved each pen for an cost, and the reverse of the box for another fee.
Doing these projects have been nice for business; not only are they large quantity purchases, but they are good advertising! What's been working for the rest of you laser people? :-)
-The Bookery
We have done a number of special projects. Just Sunday we took the laser to a bridal fair and gave away the "Two will become one" ornamets personalized with the bride and groom names and wedding date. We also took a full display of other laser product and are giving away a personalized "Love Chapter" plaque from a drawing (got names and addresses of about 100 potential customers). Many, many possible ways to use the laser product in wedding planning, gifting, rehersal dinner and one even asked about 200 dog tags to give as wedding favors.
Another nice project, both the ministry and the business aspect, was an order of 100 ZMLT02. These were taken by a men's group into Mexico where the locals don't have any hand tools. They used the gift of the tool as an incentive for the locals to attend a worship service every night of the mission trip. Show up all three nights and get the free tool.
During Christmas we used the nativity ornament as a fund raiser for local churches to support efforts to help the homeless. We sold the ornaments to the churches for $5, they sold them for $7 and gave $2 to a homeless organization. We also gave $1 for each ornament sold to a local homeless organization and ended up selling almost 400 ornaments. I am guessing almost $700 was given to local organizations with almost 300 ornaments in our city with church names and "We helped a child this Christmas" engraved on them. We also did dog tags for about 30 of the cast in the local production of the nutcracker. Had a really nice nutcracker on one side with the date and the name and "character" name of each participant on the reverse side.
The only thing lacking in this program is for me to have more time to further develop it.
Blessings,
Jeff Williams
I designed a small bookmark (similar to the metal bookmarks from Dickson) out of veneer, with John 3:16 altered slightly to insert a name instead of "the world". We were able to do some custom bookmarks with this design for a couple of customers to use in their Christmas mailings. We offer the bookmark to customers with a personalized name for $1.79. It advertises the laser and pays for the veneer.
-David Rooker
A little while ago I became curious concerning exactly how finely the laser machine can render detail, and I was amazed by what can be done! After some messing about I was able to engrave the entire 23rd Psalm on one side of a dogtag! The only other text I played with was the Gettysburgh Address, and your laser also successfully engraved it on the single side of a dogtag. The level of detail it's capable of is incredible! I'd post a photo of the finished product on here if there were a way to...
Play around with it for yourself and see what I mean. The text is pretty small, but my thirty-year-old eyes can easily read it... The biggest key is to vector the text instead of rastering it; I used 4% power and 100% speed, and set the laser to vector it. I've only tried it on the red and pink dog tags, so I don't know if those settings are the same for the other colors or not.
I say that about the colors because I've discovered in doing the "half-colored" look (e.g. red dog tag, white text, and pinkish-red graphic) that different colors require different settings. Has anyone else run into that? I assume the different paint colors have varying levels of opacity...
-Pete
These are some great ideas. It's so fun to see the different things everyone's doing with these machines. I really love the aspect of tieing ministry in there also. And the more we get to "play" :) with them, the more we discover what they are capable of. And Pete, I never thought of vectoring with less power... I've just been using vectoring for cutting out; thanks for the tip! Having the wiki like this is so awesome! Keep it up guys! [and girls :)]
-The Bookery
Pete,
That is just plain awesome! I'm posting a picture for everyone to see. Thanks for sharing.
-Joe
35
Hey I just wanted to chime in and say that Harry really says it best: "Unseen, Untold, Unsold!" Just learned a very VALUEABLE lesson. We just came through a heavy First Communion season. And in the beginning weeks there, we sold very little laser product. But then, I engraved one of the small 5.5" square plaqes with a First Commuion design. It wasn't anything fancy or elaborate. Just a simple design with an appropriate piece of clip art I found. And we sold probably close to a total of 40 of those pieces through the rest of the season! Everytime a customer would ask for one just like the sample and I couldn't believe it. It's simply the power of suggestion.
With that lesson learned, I'm glad to say graduation gifts are doing well. Our biggest selling piece is the ZMFS01 frame.... we did a simple sample that says a name and "class of 2010". A few have graduation caps on them.
Just wanted to pass on a lesson well-learned.
-The Bookery
I just wanted to pass on a trick that I learned. On many of the darker wood products I have been using WHITE shoe polish. It makes the letters stand out very well. You do have to put it on, let it dry and then wipe of excess with damp cloth.
-Eric
Yesterday a gentleman stopped in to purchase 35 ZSQS's for a conference. We helped design the layout and within a day had all the magnets engraved and ready for pickup.
-Joe Knutson
We've had a couple decent ones... We just had the chaplain from a local hospital come in and pick up the 42 magnets he ordered to give out monthly inserted in birthday cards. They were ovals we vectored from the alder wood and had the chaplain's definition/paraphrase of what a "chaplain" is and what a "volunteer" is. He was quite happy.
For a while, keychains were working really well for us as promotional items. We'd engrave a customer's company name and information on one side and offered to personalize the back for each of his clients at no extra cost. So he gave them out, and they'd come in to have their name put on the other side, generating more traffic in the store and more advertising for the laser program. These were excellent and we had a couple different customers doing this... but unfortunately the keychains we were using were discontinued and we no longer have something simple yet still nice looking that can be engraved on both sides...
We also did 12 ZCRY01s for an auto dealer. He sent us an email with his company's "core values" and we engraved them on the crystal.. That was a probably the easiest one; all that was needed was to set the file up once and change the piece out for a new one... 13 times and the order was done!
The best one however was for a customer who ordered 56 pen boxes (ZBXS). The customer wanted a different name for each set, but that really wasn't that difficult. Taking advantage of email, we just had the customer send us a spreadsheet with the names, and then we just copied and pasted. So no risk of typos! We engraved each pen for an cost, and the reverse of the box for another fee.
Doing these projects have been nice for business; not only are they large quantity purchases, but they are good advertising! What's been working for the rest of you laser people? :-)
-The Bookery
We have done a number of special projects. Just Sunday we took the laser to a bridal fair and gave away the "Two will become one" ornamets personalized with the bride and groom names and wedding date. We also took a full display of other laser product and are giving away a personalized "Love Chapter" plaque from a drawing (got names and addresses of about 100 potential customers). Many, many possible ways to use the laser product in wedding planning, gifting, rehersal dinner and one even asked about 200 dog tags to give as wedding favors.
Another nice project, both the ministry and the business aspect, was an order of 100 ZMLT02. These were taken by a men's group into Mexico where the locals don't have any hand tools. They used the gift of the tool as an incentive for the locals to attend a worship service every night of the mission trip. Show up all three nights and get the free tool.
During Christmas we used the nativity ornament as a fund raiser for local churches to support efforts to help the homeless. We sold the ornaments to the churches for $5, they sold them for $7 and gave $2 to a homeless organization. We also gave $1 for each ornament sold to a local homeless organization and ended up selling almost 400 ornaments. I am guessing almost $700 was given to local organizations with almost 300 ornaments in our city with church names and "We helped a child this Christmas" engraved on them. We also did dog tags for about 30 of the cast in the local production of the nutcracker. Had a really nice nutcracker on one side with the date and the name and "character" name of each participant on the reverse side.
The only thing lacking in this program is for me to have more time to further develop it.
Blessings,
Jeff Williams
I designed a small bookmark (similar to the metal bookmarks from Dickson) out of veneer, with John 3:16 altered slightly to insert a name instead of "the world". We were able to do some custom bookmarks with this design for a couple of customers to use in their Christmas mailings. We offer the bookmark to customers with a personalized name for $1.79. It advertises the laser and pays for the veneer.
-David Rooker
A little while ago I became curious concerning exactly how finely the laser machine can render detail, and I was amazed by what can be done! After some messing about I was able to engrave the entire 23rd Psalm on one side of a dogtag! The only other text I played with was the Gettysburgh Address, and your laser also successfully engraved it on the single side of a dogtag. The level of detail it's capable of is incredible! I'd post a photo of the finished product on here if there were a way to...
Play around with it for yourself and see what I mean. The text is pretty small, but my thirty-year-old eyes can easily read it... The biggest key is to vector the text instead of rastering it; I used 4% power and 100% speed, and set the laser to vector it. I've only tried it on the red and pink dog tags, so I don't know if those settings are the same for the other colors or not.
I say that about the colors because I've discovered in doing the "half-colored" look (e.g. red dog tag, white text, and pinkish-red graphic) that different colors require different settings. Has anyone else run into that? I assume the different paint colors have varying levels of opacity...
-Pete
These are some great ideas. It's so fun to see the different things everyone's doing with these machines. I really love the aspect of tieing ministry in there also. And the more we get to "play" :) with them, the more we discover what they are capable of. And Pete, I never thought of vectoring with less power... I've just been using vectoring for cutting out; thanks for the tip! Having the wiki like this is so awesome! Keep it up guys! [and girls :)]
-The Bookery
Pete,
That is just plain awesome! I'm posting a picture for everyone to see. Thanks for sharing.
-Joe
35
Hey I just wanted to chime in and say that Harry really says it best: "Unseen, Untold, Unsold!" Just learned a very VALUEABLE lesson. We just came through a heavy First Communion season. And in the beginning weeks there, we sold very little laser product. But then, I engraved one of the small 5.5" square plaqes with a First Commuion design. It wasn't anything fancy or elaborate. Just a simple design with an appropriate piece of clip art I found. And we sold probably close to a total of 40 of those pieces through the rest of the season! Everytime a customer would ask for one just like the sample and I couldn't believe it. It's simply the power of suggestion.
With that lesson learned, I'm glad to say graduation gifts are doing well. Our biggest selling piece is the ZMFS01 frame.... we did a simple sample that says a name and "class of 2010". A few have graduation caps on them.
Just wanted to pass on a lesson well-learned.
-The Bookery
I just wanted to pass on a trick that I learned. On many of the darker wood products I have been using WHITE shoe polish. It makes the letters stand out very well. You do have to put it on, let it dry and then wipe of excess with damp cloth.
-Eric