More dealers are machine building with laser cutters and CNC routers, and some say use of these machines is the future of the car audio industry.
“Three years from now if a shop doesn’t have some CNC or 3D printing or laser engraver, they will be missing the boat,” said retailer Chris McNulty of Driven Mobile Electronics, VA who has served as a training instructor on machine use.
CNC routers allow 12 volt dealers to precision cut subwoofer boxes. They can also precision cut speaker plates, custom trim panels and they can engrave logo designs into panels. The machines start at about $2,500 and can run up to tens of thousands of dollars or more.
Laser cutters perform some of the same functions, but on a smaller scale and in finer detail. Laser cutters don’t give you a true 90 degree cut. They wouldn’t be useful for sub boxes, but they are more efficient for dash mounting plates, speaker mounting plates and engraving.
“A CNC machine is great for making kick panels and baffles. It’s good for making something that you will need to repeat again and again, and so it’s a better investment for a shop that gets a lot of custom work,” said Bryan Schmitt of Mobile Solutions. For example, once you make a subwoofer box for a certain truck model, it’s then repeatable at almost the touch of a button for the next customer. The same goes for speaker adapters with a laser cutter.
“I believe 120 percent this is the wave of the future,” said Jason Kranitz of Kingpin University, which trains dealers in fabrication and installation. He offered his first class on machine building this year. “I think this is going to be a necessity in every shop just like the table saw is.” He added that with CNC and laser machines, “you can go outside the industry and design things for other retailers to produce another income stream. You could do signs. Build trophies, engraving on metal. There’s a ton of opportunities.”
The catch is the software for these machines can take up to a month to learn.
Mo Correa of Mo Music has been in business 22 years and was looking for a way to take his shop to a new level of expertise. “I’m great at working with my hands, but I’m not computer literate. So what was holding me back is not knowing how to use the software.” He took a class from Kingpin University. He not only learned the software but discovered for his purposes, he would be better off buying a laser cutter first, rather than a CNC router, which saved him money as laser cutters are generally cheaper. “I build a lot of custom consoles. Now I can make inserts to house switches and USB chargers and I can label them. I can engrave [a label saying] this is for a light bar. We can make our own custom speaker grills with our logo on them,” he said.
He bought a GlowForge laser cutter, which has a starting price of about $2,500 and can be financed at about $200 a month. Several retailers, said the machine then easily pays for itself.
Milton Benavides, of Speed of Sound Technology, Milford, CT said the CNC doesn’t save the shop money. “But it allows us to be more precise and show more value. It gives my clients a better feeling of value and differentiates us from the guy down the street.”
One of the brands mentioned by retailers is the X-Carve CNC Router at about $2,500 for a 4 x 4 foot model, which is big enough to cut subwoofer boxes.
In laser cutters, popular models are the GlowForge starting at about $2,500 and Boss laser cutters.
Top photo: Kingpin University CNC class
This article is very misleading for many reasons. Most average shops are cookie cutter and not doing big custom jobs so the chance of them investing in a laser or cnc machine is next to zero. Chris Cook said according to MEA stats they have that most shops only average 550k a year in sales. Yes most MES (mobile electronics syndicate) guys have made the investment and can afford such an expensive machine to try invest into their business. The small mom and pop shops that don’t subscribe to CE Outlook and there are many, will never make an investment of this kind for numerous reasons and they will still prosper in their environments.
guess after 56 years i am missing the boat. bought a cnc machine four years ago to cut my own radio dash kits. found it was much better to buy rather than build. also we don’t do fish tanks in car trunks. no neon or acrylics.