How much should you be paying for laser cutting?
While you might be looking for exact numbers, the truth is that it depends on your part’s design requirements.
At Strouse, we’ve spent decades laser cutting materials into intricate parts for product applications. While laser cutting cost varies, certain aspects of your product will affect the pricing.
To help you understand laser cutting costs, this article will explain the factors that will affect the cost of your laser cut design.
What is the Cost of Laser Cutting?
The cost of laser cutting services depends on many factors. It can be extremely variable due to the range of project requirements and custom designs.
Think to yourself: Which services or machine capabilities does my project require?
For example, is laser cutting the only step in building your flexible product, or is it part of a multi-step production process? Are you prepared to go to production or do you want to make design modifications?
If you’re ready for an exact price, you can request a quote for your custom design. However, let’s quickly review the factors that affect the cost of laser cutting so you can better understand the price estimate.
Factors That Affect the Cost of Laser Cutting
The complexity of a laser cutting project will vary significantly based on your design requirements.
Note: These factors primarily apply to CO2 laser cutters, the ideal type of laser for cutting flexible materials.
1. QUANTITY
Sample laser cutting is an excellent option for rapid prototypes and smaller batches (50-100 parts). These prototypes can be used for testing, gathering data, and making design modifications.
Full-scale laser cutting on a machine press (typically done on a galvo laser) is a cost-effective production method for larger quantities (1000s of parts). A calibrated machine performs complex processes instead of hand laminating, cutting, or mining material.
Full-scale production requires additional setup time and potentially the purchase of a die cut tool, but may result in a lower overall price for larger orders.
Flexible parts with tight-tolerance features can be built on a press using a combination of die tools and laser processes. Lastly, parts on a roll are more challenging to make (especially in bulk) on the smaller-scale sample laser.
2. SIZE OF PART
Laser cutting can be a relatively slow process that may require multiple passes of the laser beam. Designs with larger dimensions have a slower cutting speed and require more material (since you can’t fit as many parts into one area), resulting in a higher cost.
3. MATERIAL STACK UP
The material stack-up refers to the number of layers in your design and their thicknesses. It also refers to the individual cost of each material. Material cost often makes up 70-80% of total costs.
Assembling the material stack-up involves cutting and laminating layers of materials on top of one another, which adds to the set-up time when you’re working manually.
The number of layers or materials in your design affects its set-up cost: manually building a six-layer part in twenty seconds is impossible, but a simple, single-layer part may have a relatively quick set-up process.
Your material choice will also impact the complexity of the cutting process. For instance, thin materials are often easier to cut. In contrast, thicker materials like VHB, acrylic, rubber, foam, and thick adhesives will take more time and effort (including multiple passes of the laser).
4. COMPLEXITY
Material selection is a major factor in the complexity of a laser cutting project due to the importance of material thickness and behavior.
As previously mentioned, a thin material may require a single laser pass, whereas thick materials require additional passes of the laser, making them more challenging and significantly slower to run. Thicker adhesives also tend to “grow back” after they’ve been cut, which can lead to quality issues.
Certain materials may behave strangely when laser cut, such as polyimide, which leaves a messy, soot-stained appearance on the back of laser cut parts. To prevent this, converters must take additional steps such as putting protective masking tape over the material before it’s cut, creating a more complicated process.
Finally, when building prototypes, an operator places material or liner, makes cuts, and continues adding layers until the right stack-up is achieved at the beginning or in between laser cuts. These mid-process operations are necessary to create adhesive features like tabs, but they require more time.
Where Can I Find Laser Cutting Services?
For complex and accurate laser cut parts, you'll want to find someone who can prove out your concept, and despite the abundance of laser owners, not all laser cutting services are created equal.
Working with the wrong partner will result in quality issues on a design that hasn’t been optimized for efficient full-scale manufacturing. If you genuinely want the best result, you’ll find a company with the right laser equipment and experience to match your needs.
If you’re interested in laser prototyping or full-scale laser cutting production, contact an experienced converter like Strouse to help you build your custom design.
Strouse will bring your project from prototype to production, optimizing the design and machine setup for an efficient and cost-effective process. Visit our Learning Center for additional information about our capabilities and laser cutting services with a converter.
