Professional Engraving Systems

Is Faster Engraving Speed Important?

There has been a buzz in web chat rooms, on trade show floors, and on the shop floor about laser engraving speed. No matter how you view it, the bottom line is that faster speeds lead to greater productivity which leads to reduced cost, greater profits, and more free time.

As an example, we laser engraved a multiple plate with 96 tags measuring 1” by 3” on a 12” by 24” sheet of material.

Each tag had two lines of text filling up 40% of the tag. We ran the job at 500 dpi and 300 dpi at 75 inches per second and at 150 inches per second with the following results:

Resolution: 500 DPI

     Time test 96 tags at 75 ips: 17 minutes, 38 seconds

    Time test 96 tags at 150 ips: 11 minutes, 33 seconds

Resolution 333 DPI

     Time test 96 tags at 75 ips: 11 minutes, 49 seconds

    Time test 96 tags at 150 ips: 7 minutes, 47 seconds

If you convert this difference in performance and annualize it (8 hours a day for the year), you will produce 1,539,949 tags engraving at 150 ips at 333 dpi versus 1,014,462 engraving at 75 ips at 333 dpi. This difference represents a 52 percent increase in productivity. In terms of cost savings, using an annual manufacturing overhead of $93,600, your business would save roughly $48,800 annually in unit costs through the increased productivity.

You may be thinking, this is great but I don’t have a year’s worth of 8 hour daily work for my laser. Will I really save by buying the faster laser? Let’s assume that you have a specific amount of work for your laser for the year, for purposes of this case, 1,014,462 of our 1” by 3” tags. If you used the 75 ips, it would take you the full year to complete the tags running at 8 hours per day. If you use the 150 ips laser, you would finish well before the year is up and free 710 hours of time, or approximately 2.7 hours per day, you can use for other production tasks, other types of work, or possibly leisure time!

To understand the best fit for your engraving needs, contact your Xenetech distributor. With the correct equipment, you will maximize your profitability and reduce the amount of time it takes to create it!