I recently had a corporate customer approach me to give them a price on marking thousands of metal plates. This order would be repeated about 10 times a year. I have a contact in this company who told me who presently does the work for them and how much they charge. After doing a few sample runs with my 45 watt co2 and cermark I realized that I can't touch their price. I then did a local search to look into subbing the job out and realized that besides the company that is presently doing the job there are only a couple of companies within a 30 mile radius that actually do metal marking work. That got me thinking.
Is there a big enough market to consider puchasing a used yag laser?
I don't know enough about them. Are they that much different to use than co2 lasers. How much can I expect to pay for a used one and is it worth it. What other markets can this lead to that I can't do with my co2.
Thanks,
Tony

We did some research on YAG and fiber lasers.

The YAG's are physically huge and need lots of three phase power. They cost enough to make my eyes cross. They are also very inefficient.

The fibers are less expensive and use much less power but due to not being able to pulse at a low enough frequency, the give problems on silver and silver plated items. The few that were at the show were extremely low power, 5-10 watts.

I'm going to wait until the fiber laser industry matures a little bit.

If you have enough business and can install a machine that is about 8' long by 6' high, and have a lot of three phase power floating around, it might be worth getting into.

Philadelphia, PA (Really Bensalem)

When you finally understand it completely... it changes.