Frequently Asked Questions

What Materials Can you Print On & Engrave?

Wood (Any soft or hard wood), Aluminium (Bare or anodised/painted), Stainless Steel, Brass, Gold, Copper, Titanium, Slate, Stone, Glass, Acrylic, Composite & Cardboard.

In summary, virtually any material! This is achieved by either printing on substrates using UV curing resins or engraving the material at various wavelengths from UV to Infrared, which ensures the substrate can absorb the energy. We use UV, diode, fibre and CO2 lasers for deep engraving and provide a full colour printing option when using UV curing inks on over 300 different materials.

What Materials Can You Cut & Emboss?

Soft woods up to 25mm and hard woods up to 20mm thick. Any colour Acrylic (including transparent) can also be cut up to 25mm thick.

In terms of embossing metallics, we can deep engrave around 1.0-1.5mm.

What Size Can You Work To?

Our CO2 lasers have a bed size of 915mm x 458mm and can accommodate a Z height of up to 220mm. Our fibre & UV lasers can engrave a maximum size of 500mm x 220mm with a height up to 145mm.

For UV colour printing, our maximum size is A3 (420mm x 300mm) with a Z height of around 60mm.

Can you engrave & print on spherical and cylindrical objects?

The simple answer is yes! We have a rotary attachment for spherical and cylindrical objects, allowing the part to rotate whilst the laser is active. Some of the items we have engraved include:

  • Baseballs

  • Golf balls

  • Bolts

  • Watches

  • Wedding rings (both inside and outside surfaces)

  • Vases

  • Tumblers

  • Hip flasks

What Finishes Can You Offer?

Wood & Natural materials: Any woods can be oiled, varnished or painted depending on your requirements. Our chopping boards are oiled with a food safe grade of Danish oil. We usually wax or clear lacquer slate for a nice contrasting finish.

Metallics: We work with metal finishing companies to provide surface treatments such as anodizing, passivation or nitriding to provide hardness and/or corrosion resistance.

Our UV printers can provide a textured surface as well as finishing prints with a gloss layer if required. In terms of colour reproduction, our UV printers can print over 1 million different colours!

Can you help me with my design?

Island Laser Works uses a variety of graphic design and 3D modelling packages to provide design support to our customers. Need help designing your perfect logo? No problem! Our team can turn even a simple pencil sketch into professional art work

What file types can you accept if I send you my design?

2D Images: We can accept any image files as JPEG, PNG and BMP. If possible, we always recommend sending us a vector file such as:

  • AI

  • DXF

  • SVG

  • PDF

  • EPS

We do have tracing software available should we need to convert your image to a vector.

3D Files: For 3D data for processes such as sub-surface engraving in glass, we can use file types such as:

  • STP/STEP

  • IGS/IGES

  • OBJ

  • STL

  • 3MF

What Makes Island Laser Works Different To Other Laser Engraving & Cutting Companies?

We use state of the art laser technology providing engraving speeds up to 15,000mm/s with surface meshing for competitive pricing. Surface meshing allows us to engrave and print on non-planar surfaces such as vases whereby the laser can adjust its focus along the length of the object. Customer satisfaction is our top priority and many projects we work on are turned around in 48 hours.