Brand New LASER ENGRAVER! Thunder Nova 51 First Test.
Fricken’ Laser Beams! Today I’m unboxing and running my brand new Thunder Laser Nova 51 laser engraver. This is the final piece that I needed to complete my master plan of having a one-stop shop when I cooked up the idea of Rogue Lab in a tiny bedroom 5 years ago. I knew right from the start that I would need a laser engraver in the mix because I’ve been applying laser engraved leather patches on hats since I got my first hat heat press, and me being me, I wanted control over the quality rather than outsourcing it to someone else who might not care as much as I do.
Once I started to dive deeper into what these machines could do, I quickly saw just how big of an asset they could be to a shop like mine. Cutting embroidery applique, creating patches, engraving drinkware, and making signs are all standard operations for these things that can bring in revenue. But then I started to think about the things that I haven’t seen, the ways that I could combine this machine with other equipment in my shop to create really unique stuff that isn’t being done every day.
After that I was on a mission to get a laser and after talking with a few different manufacturers, Thunder Laser was who I landed on. The features and quality lined up perfectly for me and their customer service was the best of the bunch by far, most of the big players in the industry still haven’t even returned my emails to this day. The initial unboxing and setup was very simple for the most part. Getting it off the crate takes either a lot of people to lift or some creativity but that’s to be expected with a 1000LB machine, nothing a chainsaw and a pallet jack couldn’t fix. Basic training and first time operations were a breeze for me personally since I have a design background and am no stranger to running equipment in a print shop, for a brand new person it might take a bit more effort but it’s still pretty simple.
One top of all that, my first time running couldn’t have gone any smoother. Usually when I’m learning something new I expect to waste a ton of materials and time on practice and dialing things in, not today. I was able to create engraved patches in only three tries and an acrylic sign on the first try! I don’t know if I just got really lucky or if this laser stuff is actually that easy to figure out, either way it was nice to just open a box and make something work right. Time will tell how difficult this really is as I dive into more stuff but for my first time touching a laser, I couldn’t be happier with the results.
Big thanks to Thunder Laser for helping me bring this to my shop and to the channel, they’ve been amazing to deal with. Expect plenty more videos with this beast of a machine in the near future. Can’t wait to see what we can make!
