I need to engrave some walking sticks. They are 60" long so they won’t fit on the laser beds…
Does anyone have any ideas of how or where I can get this done?
I can’t do them by hand because nobody would be able to read them. 
Any ideas would be appreciated.
That should be able to fit in Big Thunder at an angle. It’ll take a bit of math, but it can be done.
Stated bed size is 63". I take it that is not “usable” length?
The stated bed size is 63" x 39.4". Assuming Pythagoras is still correct that means that the diagonal of the bed is 74.3". sqrt((63 x 63) + (39.4 x 39.4)) = 74.3
Should be plenty big, unless you are thinking to use the rotary.
No arguments. But since 60"<63", why does Pythagoras enter into it?
Hopefully not, since I think those are still inop…
Just putting more information out there, so that people realize what is possible on the lasers.
I once engraved 32" baseball bats on a 12" x 24" laser, including manual rotation to engrave 1/2 around the barrels. Given a little math, a willingness to think outside the box, and a little ingenuity you can do a lot with what we have.
That’s awesome it will fit… now, for some reason, I thought it was smaller.
So, I have the place, Now I just need to figure out how. 
Thanks for the info.
no rotary… they are not perfectly in round.
The how is what’ll take some experimentation. Are you wanting to engrave them all the way around or just one part?
The front panel opens on all three Thunders, so you can also do longer pieces that way.
You can use bean bags to stabilize them. @RFguy
We have CNC lasers with three different bed sizes so a little confusion is not surprising.
@agvet I figured there will be some trial and error involved. I have one spare stick that I can experiment on. Ill be engraving on one face of the stick at a time. I don’t think it will need to wrap around the stick.
Good to know @talkers on the front panel. I seem to vaguely remember something about that from your 101 class but that was a long time ago. I like the beanbag idea, I am pretty sure I will use that when bring them in. Thanks!
You’ll need to get the panel key from someone on the laser committee with access to it.
Ah well that should be pretty easy then if you don’t need it to wrap around. Just use blocks of wood or whatever to prop up/stabilize/make parallel the wood and you’re good to go. Also doing a trial run at 0 or 1 power is your friend for alignment on irregular surfaces/runs when Frame alone isn’t accurate enough.
Here is a picture of the first one. I am going to try the second stick this afternoon. The text on the right got a little distorted but overall it turned out decent.
I practiced on dowels that were about the same size and then etched the stick. I was able to lay the stick on the bed, align it by going back and forth on the laser (left to right) to make sure i was as centered as possible.
