Laser & Mill...so happy together?

A real cherry...

Wine on Deck's Wine Wings come in two styles: "Original" and "Engraved".  Our engraved Wine Wings are laser-etched by Dave LaPlante of Andover, MA.  Laser engraving is a popular way to customize both hand-made items such as our Wine Wings, and factory-produced mass market items.  One reason for the popularity is the laser's incredible resolution: it can etch into wood detail down to 1/1000th of an inch.  But laser engraving is expensive - that laser eventually needs to be replaced - and laser engravers themselves start at around $15 thousand each, and quickly rise to over $100k.



Dave LaPlante does an excellent job for us, and we're happy to outsource our laser engraving to him.  But new Wine Wing designs are on the horizon, including designs "quilted" with patterns like holly leaves (for the holidays) or hearts (for Valentine's Day).  For this purpose, the right tool isn't a laser engraver, but a CNC-controlled mill.

Ever the tinkerer, and parsimonious with my cash, I searched long and hard for an inexpensive mill that could me modified for CNC control.  One day, a CNC-modified desktop mill popped up on Craigslist.  I has to act quickly: the rascals at MIT's Media Lab were offering extra cash to the seller to spurn me, the first respondent.  I'm telling you, man, these CNC mills are hot stuff!

Anyway, the seller was an honest man, who knew a fellow independent inventor when he saw one.  I scored the mill, which the seller had modified himself for CNC control.  It's a cherry of a machine: cherry red, and not 1/100th of an inch of runout.  A dream on a desktop.

Now, we are in yet another product design phase.  Soon, our Wine Wings will have some brand new  suits to try on - one for each season.

Tally Ho!