Moe's Tavern - Tutorial

Building Moe's Tavern from scratch using a $2200 laser cutter! Believe it or not but that is considered cheap compared to some that cost well over $10,000.

Building Moe's Tavern was a lot of fun, the hardest part of the entire process was actually designing the building on the computer.
I used a vector drawing program called CorelDRAW x8, it's very similar to another program I'm much more familiar with called Adobe Illustrator however there are just enough differences between the two programs that I had to watch an online learning course in order to understand the different functions.

Ninety nine percent of the hard work was most definitely done using the GY430 laser cutter. I purchased it from Cole Tool Center located in Cairns, Australia (Imported from China) and it had been fully tuned and tested before it ever made it to the boot of my car.
The risk of buying one of these cheap laser cutters from China is getting a faulty cutter and they can sometime be more trouble than they are worth!

Moe's Tavern is not the only design I've cut so far using the laser, I also recently cut and engraved a paint rack to hold all of my Vallejo paints. Laser cut paint racks are very popular in hobby shops so it's pretty cool to be able to design and cut my very own version to exactly suit my needs.

The possibilities are nearly endless with whats possible using a laser cutter, I have heaps of ideas and projects that I'll be working on in 2018 using this awesome laser cutter!
If you too are planning on buying your own laser cutter I strongly recommend doing your research before buying one from China, if you can afford it the brand name laser cutters are a much better first start however if budget is the limiting factor and you don't mind fixing small problems like mirror alignment or loose leveling beds then a cheap laser might just be a good fit. 

Be sure to check the laser cutting section of this website if you want to find out more about laser cutting and if you want to download the free plans for cutting Moe's Tavern and the Paint Rack you'll find those plans HERE: LASER CUTTING PLANS