January 14

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Laser Cutting Materials


Getting access to quality materials for laser cutting and engraving projects can be a challenge. Often the large scale manufacturers won't even return your emails or calls unless you are looking to spend thousands of Euros. How do we know? Because that was us 6 years ago when we had just started TechCreate.

We contacted suppliers and material manufacturers looking to see if we could buy a few sheets of material for laser cutting and engraving. Most of the time they politely declined, and on many occasions they just didn't reply.

In the end we had to deal with laser cutting materials suppliers in the UK who were more geared up for smaller businesses or hobby laser users. We could buy precut sheets that fit our laser and get them shipped over. Shipping charges were often high, but at least it was somewhat reliable. We operated like this for a couple of years.

The next challenge was Brexit which meant new restrictions and import charges when bringing in materials from the UK. This caused us a major headache. However with adversity comes opportunity and we quickly realised that if we were struggling to get materials for our lasers then others were too.

The big challenge we had was the space to store materials if we purchased in bulk. We realised we needed more space than our current studio offered. So in September 2021 we acquired an industrial unit in Acorn Business Park, Rathangan

laser materials acorn business park rathangan

Laser Materials building. Acorn Business Park Rathangan, Co. Kildare

The next challenge was that the sheets of different laser materials come from the various timber mills in large sizes. Typically 2400 x 1220 mm sheet sizes. So these would need to be cut down to size so that they could be used on most lasers. We investigated table saws and larger lasers. Eventually we settled on a vertical panel saw. This was the most ergonomic and used up the least amount of space.

Vertical panel saw for cutting sheet material to size

So armed with the space and the hardware to cut the laser materials down to size we reached out across the world and sourced all of the materials we need. These include laser plywood, laser MDF and some really high quality veneered MDF. We will expand the range over time so if there is anything you need that you can't find then please let us know.

We decided to build a new website and keep it separate from TechCreate. We are pleased that this new site is now live:

You can find the new website here at www.lasermaterials.ie

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