Laser cutting and custom design services
Hot Pop Factory is a modern design and manufacturing firm that breathes life into your ideas. Our team of specialists guarantees high-quality, and on-time delivery of your most important projects.
Since 2012, we’ve helped the city’s leading marketing professionals, brands, corporations, designers and artisans with fast, laser cutting and custom design services. Choose from cost-effective plywood, color-rich acrylics, or supply your own suitable substrate or textiles. To get started, send us your designs, and our team of experts will handle the rest.
Materials
Hot Pop Factory can cut a variety of different materials including:
- Wood & Plywood
- Acrylic & Plastics
- Leather & Textiles
- Paper & Cardboard
- and more...
Fast Turnaround
Hot Pop Factor provides a fast turnaround and options to receive your cut products:
- 24hr Rush Service
- 48hr Rush Service
- Standard 3-5 Business Day
Diverse Applications
Hot Pop Factory provides cutting services for a vast array of applications including:
- Branded Products
- Awards
- Signage
- Artwork
- Fashion
- Architecture Models
- Prototypes
- and more...
Laser Cutting Case Studies
Learn why local designers and makers choose Hot Pop Factory for Laser Cutting Hamilton
You’ll Be In Good Company.
Hundreds of companies across Canada have selected Hot Pop Factory as a go to place for all their Laser Cutting Hamilton Services.
Customer Testimonials
We love working with Hot Pop! We've gone to them repeatedly for big and small Laser Cutting projects, always with great results. We often involve them throughout the design process to help us tackle tough problems and come up with unconventional solutions.
Mark Simmons
Industrial Designer, Future Artificat
Amazing customer service and their attention to detail is beyond expectation. I'm excited to work on more projects with Hot Pop Factory for our VAWK collections in the future.
Sunny Fong
Fashion Designer, VAWK
Materials
We stock a wide variety of popular laser cutting materials as listed below, for your convenience, download the full list here. Customers are welcome to provide their own materials, we simply request that they accompany their material with an MSDS or manufacturer and material information so we can verify that they can be laser cut safely.
Just need the sheet material? You can shop our most popular materials through our online store Hot Pop Goods!
Here is a list of common materials we can process, for more images and examples of how these materials can be used for your project, check out our Full Materials Guide.
Plywood / MAX CUT SIZE: 600 x 900mm
Our most popular material and one of the most affordable and versatile. Plywood cuts quickly with an attractive finish. The edge takes on a golden-brown look, engraving and scoring operations have a similar effect on the surface of the material.
We stock Baltic Birch plywood in 3mm (1/8") and 6mm (1/4") thicknesses. We strongly recommend this species as other plywood types contain adhesives which don't cut as well in terms of speed and cut quality. Learn more about laser cutting on plywood.
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- Wood Plywood Birch
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- Wooden corporate gifts Hot Pop Factory Shop
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- Wooden Ornaments
Laser Cutting Hamilton Price & Process
We price Laser Cutting Hamilton services on an individual basis as most projects are custom and require unique considerations.
In general the total cost of a project is some combination of materials, labor and machine time. Listed is a breakdown of factors we consider when quoting your project.
The easiest way to get pricing for your job is to submit your project for a quote.
File Preparation
Using our pre-made templates is the easiest and cheapest way to prepare your projects for Laser Cutting Hamilton. We need clean vector files that are the right size. Please separate the linework into layers for each laser operation: cutting, scoring, and engraving.
Machine Setup
Jobs cut on our stock sheet material are generally the least expensive to setup. Jobs that require special alignment on existing products are generally more expensive. This is because additional labor is required to create jigs that align your artwork correctly.
Cutting
For cutting operations we use special software to estimate the amount of machine time needed for your project. For most jobs this is the bulk of the cost. Thick or dense materials take longer to cut and are therefore more expensive to work with than thinner, light-weight materials.
Engraving
Engraving operations tend to be more expensive than cutting operations. This is because the laser must make many passes over your artwork moving a fraction of a millimeter each time in order to cover the entire surface area of your artwork. The cost mainly depends on the amount of surface area that needs engraving. Unlike cutting, the material price does not generally affect the engraving price.
Labor
Labor applies to jobs that require special handling (i.e. extremely delicate materials like fine papers), or jobs that require special finishing operations or complex file setup. Most projects setup using our templates and flat sheet material do not require any additional labor.
Materials
Materials are priced by the square foot, and generally increase in cost with quality and thickness. Detailed information about materials for laser engraving can be found above.
Turnaround
Our standard turnaround time can be viewed here. Rush service is available if you need your project quickly. It costs more because we must adjust our production schedule. This allows us to prioritize your project over others.
Laser Cutting Hamilton Turnaround Times
Laser Cutting Hamilton Templates
Below are Laser Cutting Hamilton templates for some common software packages. These templates indicate the maximum cut size of our machine (900mm x 600mm), with layers to separate your artwork for laser cutting, engraving and scoring.
Adobe Illustrator (.AI File)
The templates below provide artboards that correspond to the maximum work area of our laser cutter. If you are cutting multiple sheets, please save them as separate files. We recommend outlining all fonts, and releasing all clipping masks for laser cutting. Your artwork should be divided into the three layers provided: 'Cut', 'Engrave' and 'Score'.
AutoCAD (.DXF 2000 File)
The AutoCAD template includes a polyline indicating the maximum work area of the laser cutter. Your parts should be placed inside of the indicated area, with linework moved into the premade layers for cutting, engraving and scoring operations. The laser cutter is unable to recognize live text, or hatches in AutoCAD, so these must be exploded and turned into polylines before sending.
Other Software Packages
The above software packages are some of the most popular, but there are many other programs that are suitable for generating designs for laser cutting. For cutting and scoring, any software capable of exporting vector linework is suitable. If you are only looking to engrave, then we can accept raster images generated in software like Photoshop, keep in mind though that raster images are not suitable for cutting or scoring operations.
For cutting and scoring. We can accept any of the following common vector formats:
- .SVG
- .DXF 2000
- .EPS
- .AI
- .DWG 2000
- .3DM Rhino 5
For engraving we can accept any of the formats above. If you only have a .JPG or .PNG file, please email us at team@hotpopfactory.com and we can provide you with the instructions on how to convert it to one of the above formats.