Laser cutting is charged at $1.00 per minute cutting time (see below) plus material costs. In addition there is a setup fee, which incurs a once only charge of $25 per job.
These have a minimum charge of $33 (includes setup fee, cutting time and materials only). This does not apply to re-orders once an item has already been cut. Note that correction of mistakes in drawings supplied by the customer will be charged at $44 per hour or part thereof with a minimum charge of $11.
A minimum of $25 will be applied to all new jobs.
There is a charge of $44 per hour for producing drawings suitable for lasering from customer supplied drawings, photographs, sketches, etc.
These will be assessed on a case by case basis, depending on how much extra effort your job entails. Extra effort can be defined as time to establish power and speed settings for customer supplied material (if different from material routinely cut by Brunel Models), or time required to tape down or handle your work, time to clean up pieces and surface area, etc. If your project involves many small pieces which need handling and cleanup (such as small coach components) there will be an extra charge. Repeat customers can expect significantly reduced setup charges. If the laser cutting time is very short (eg: cutting a few holes in a number of sheets of styrene) then costs will be based on the total time including handling (in this case operator time is significantly longer than cutting time). As a general rule you can assume that a handling charge of $1.10 will be charged per sheet of material provided most of the parts cut out are reasonably large.
There is no minimum run requirement. However all prototyping costs will be charged (eg; cutting time, material, etc).
Smoke may adhere to some types of paper (such as glossy) much more than others. When asking for a quote, be sure to send a small sample of your paper to us if your using anything unusual.
If you have a job of between 20 to several thousand items, or have extremely complex images that need cutting, laser cutting may be the way to go. If you have a simple larger job, the expense of cutting the items on a laser may be too high.
How much to engrave these in 0.5 mm styrene? (The customer attached various .JPG images).
The charge is $1 a minute plus $25 setup fee, so it depends on the size of the finished product. Do you have a vector graphic drawing instead? If you wish Brunel Models to draw (vectorise) the items in the image you will be charged at $44 per hour or part thereof. How deep does the engraving or cut need to be? Will you be supplying the material? How big are the sheets of styrene? We can handle 400mm x 300mm. In this case the customer has not provided enough information to give an accurate quote.
What would the set-up costs be for a 10cm x 20cm x 0.5mm thick styrene sheet? I produce vehicles and require the detail for a master model so would require only 5 or so sheets with 2-3 different supplied bit-mapped or vector graphics files?
Assuming that your files are totally ready to go, the will be minimum setup cost of $25.
Does the cost go down if I order more then 1 item?
Laser time is charged at $1 per minute regardless of number of items. If there is substantial setup or drawing work required this will be charged above the $25 setup fee. The main thing is to minimise costs by providing a vector graphic drawing preferably in CorelDraw 9-X3 format.
Normally about 2 weeks. This assumes, however, that you artwork is OK and little or no extra effort is required for making it suitable for cutting and that the material for lasering is available. If you supply a scanned drawing or a hard copy drawing then it will take longer (depending on the accuracy of the drawing and if a test cut needs to be produced for your approval)and you will be charged for the drawing work.