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Lasers
Fri, 2014-10-31 04:32 — David Calhoun
Are you going into business producing kits? How much can you cut for use on a private model railroad the size of a basement? I guess everyone needs a toy or two - just be careful that you don't laser a hole in your home or some valuable item like your fingers or something - LOL! Good luck.
Owning your very own personal laser is not about selling kits, although the enterprising individual could very well sell kits if they wanted to. Once you have a laser and you're comfortable with CAD, you're on the same potential operating level as the big manufacturers.
Owning a laser is a matter of custom craftsmanship. You are essentially limited by only your imagination and your engineering sense, and if you need help with engineering a good laser-cut kit, there's no better way than to buy a couple of the cheaper commercial kits and to try them out. When you get a project mapped out, there's no fears of only doing a single run and asking "did I do it all correct?" I'm not afraid of running a project until I get it right, hence, my station kit beget a large pile of test blanks. The discards pile becomes nice scrap materials, resembling pipes, boards, bricks, and other commonly sized elements that make for good clutter around a scene.
Once you have the process down, the question is not "how many kits can I sell" but rather "how many kits can I avoid buying?" When you see a cool project, instead of saying "I Have to buy that!" the thought is instead "I can make that!" And while this may not seem like a big deal when it's a $10 or $25 or $50 kit, when the big kits are running two and three hundred dollars each, and the unbuilt pile in the closet grows into a small mound, the realized savings becomes a matter of building exactly what you want when you need it, instead of saving up for the "someday" layout.
And with that being said, Instead of looking for the tower that "looks close" in the catalog, you can instead turn to the prototype you want to build and draw that up instead. All that individual cutting and fitting that the scratch builders do, you can get the same level of craftsmanship without spending a lifetime studying the hand techniques needed to obtain even sub-par results. Instead, you get a perfect window, every time, all the time, right out of the gate! Further, this means you can spend your time practicing the assembly process, the FUN part of model railroading!!!
Did I mention how much fun it is to get a new power tool and to take it out of box? 
Your fears about lasering a hole in your home or fingers or something are really quite unfound at this point, these machines are far safer than any power tool I have ever used. If you use a table saw or a router, you're putting yourself at far more peril than you ever will operating a laser cutter, unless you decide to defeat the safety interlocks and be an idiot.
MRH should contact Full Spectrum Engineering and see if the magazine can get a kickback of some sort on laser sales after seeing how many people are buying them after seeing the work here at MRH! I bought mine, Michael contacted me and got his, Bill got his, and now, it's like popcorn popping in a kettle!!! I myself, I was influenced by Robert Ray on Trainboard after he bought his laser back in the early 2000s and started lasering up Northern Pacific Cabooses in N Scale. His was a different make and model, of course, but it certainly put the laser cutter on my "tools I must have someday" list!
Next hurdle: file sharing. We'll see if, when and where it happens.
