Alas, like most things free, it still costs money to keep this site going, so I am asking for a donation to keep Starshiphulls.com online and producing more hulls. Just chuck 2 of your countries smallest denomination notes in an envelope and send it to:
Starship Hulls
1160 Milligan Rd
Mundaring 6073
Perth, Western Australia
It will be appreciated.
The cost to complete varies from hull to hull due to two factors which are:
1. The number of pieces in the hull itself.
2. The cost per minute of the laser cutter that is used.
In an effort to keep costs down, I have designed the individual pieces of the hull to "share" common edges. For example, two squares (normally drawn with 4 lines each) are placed next to each other so that they "share" one of the lines and only 7, not 8, lines can be seen. (Fig. 1.)
I call this a "joined" template and have done all of the hulls this way to reduce cutting costs. This method doesn't affect the accuracy of the cut hull at all. I will produce unjoined templates only if there is a demand.
The power of the laser further complicates things because the higher the wattage the quicker it will cut but the higher will be the cost per minute of cutting.
For example:
A 25 Watt laser cutting charge could be $1.00 per minute, so 60 minutes of cutting costs $60.00.
However,
A 100 Watt laser cuts the same hull in 25 minutes but costs $3.00 per minute, which adds up to $75.00.
So remember, it is the COST PER MINUTE not the power of the laser that counts!