Thanks for your thoughts. I heard from another fellow who said laser etching does not work well on metals but is fantastic for stone and marble. So I have a lot of experimenting to do! I have been casually investigating sand-blasting for several years but the problem always seemed to be setup costs and time. The general feeling was that sandblasting a dial would take 2-4 hours of hand labor, which is pretty expensive, plus they want a setup fee. The cost ended up being a couple hundred dollars just for the blasting. That's why I hoped that an NC laser machine would be cheaper - plunk a tile on the bed, stick a floppy in the computer and press "GO"
Knowing my interest in these things, my wife gave me a GeoStar "Accurate" sundial for my birthday a couple of years ago. I was not impressed. Technically it is fine but it has no soul. I want to do something that has more charm and I thought slate or marble would be nice. I don't think there's any chance I'll put you out of business, you're in a completely different class! But I may contact you about licensing SundialAlign. I don't really expect to make a living at this but just want to have fun and maybe get my hobby to pay for itself. Anyone who loves sundials and lives near Seattle obviously isn't playing with a full deck ;-) Thanks again, I'll keep the list posted if anything comes of this. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 4:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Starting a sundial business Steve, T.- Laser etching is fantastic on anodised aluminum, but this may not be the material of your choice. It works also on stone, and I have hired someone to do this for my early granite Sawyer Equants, but believe it or not, sand blasting gave cleaner results and was cheaper. The sandblast masks were made inexpensively from an Adobe Illustrator file, which in turn can be made from a dxf file. Laser etching works poorly on bronze and brass, in my experience. Will your idea work? It might. A similar custom product made from aluminum is available at http://www.gis.net/~geostar/ for just about $60. Patent-wise, I do not know how to answer your question. I doubt there are any active patents you would infringe upon, but copyrights may be a different matter. I would be asking my lawyer. Good luck, and don't put me out of business. Bill Gottesman www.precisionsundials.com In a message dated 7/24/2002 4:42:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > 'm interested in starting a web-based custom sundial business. My > idea, briefly, is that people would come to my site, select a sundial > design, choose a motto and other decoration, enter their location and > other pertinent info, and leave a credit card number. I will have > some software that creates the sundial and sends it to a > manufacturer. The complete dial is shipped to the customer. I will > limit my choice of dials to vertical or horizontal flat models with > simple gnomons. > > A little more detail: I want to etch the dial face into stone, slate, > or ceramic tiles using a laser etching process. Since these machines > are expensive I hope to find a service that will accept a DXF or > other digital format and do the etching. I provide a gnomon, package > the thing and ship it. I can write the software myself or use one of > the many programs available. > > A few of the many, many questions.... > Is this feasible at all? What success have others had with this type > of business? Can zonwvlak be used for commercial purposes? > Is laser etching suitable for this application? Anyone have any > experience with it? > How do I insure that I don't violate any patents? > - -
