Programme assurance
The named document set, the acceptance gates, the requirements traceability matrix and the exposure cap, written before the build starts.
Programme economics
A marking programme is priced as engineering, not as a machine.
Every line in a proposal is scoped and priced on its own: the source class and power the material dictates, the head count the line rate dictates, the fixturing built around your part, the integration depth against the system that already owns the job, safety and extraction, commissioning on your own parts, training, spares and the support tier. Nothing sits behind a single line labelled 'system'. The drivers that move each of those are published below, alongside third-party benchmarks for the category, the worksheet that produces your current annual coding cost, and how the capital is structured. Payment on a staged programme is released against the gates, so exposure at any point is capped at the value of the stage in progress, and the final release is tied to the Site Acceptance Record signed on your line.
- Priced against published drivers: source class and power, head count, line rate and part presentation, fixturing and modules, integration depth, safety and guarding, lines and sites, commissioning, training, support tier and spares
- Third-party benchmarks for the category, attributed as third-party benchmarks: tier one laser coder installations in the USD 20,000 to 50,000 range, integrated marking cells with fixturing and line integration in the USD 50,000 to 150,000 range
- Capital structured outright, through your own equipment facility, or released gate by gate as each acceptance artefact closes
A programme is a sequence of priced stages, each with its own gate
A programme this size is rarely approved in one signature, so it is not quoted as one. Each stage is scoped, quoted and accepted on its own, and each leaves the plant holding something usable whether or not the next stage is approved.
The first stage is a Marking Process Capability Study and a site scope, priced and run as their own engagement. You send a part and a numbered report comes back on it, with the parameter set and the determined process window stated for that substrate; what else the report records is itemised on specifications. Alongside it, a survey of the actual line: part presentation, line rate, floor space, power, extraction, and what the mark has to survive downstream. Both artefacts are yours, and between them they close the two drivers that move a quoted number furthest, which source class the material takes and how many heads the line rate takes. Before those are closed, any figure anyone gives you is an estimate.
Design and specification follows: marking process specification, fixture and part presentation design, the written interface specification against your ERP or MES with its failure behaviour clause by clause, and acceptance criteria agreed in writing before anything is built. That stage produces a specification detailed enough to tender against, with a price against it. Then the pilot line: build, factory acceptance run and signed before the system leaves us, install and commissioning, operator training, handover pack. Then controlled replication, where each further site gets its own survey, commissioning and signed acceptance record under a group standard held in change control.
A single-line install and a rollout across sites are different orders of magnitude and different architecture. One line is a scoped, contained project. A rollout is reference design, integration governance and support tier design applied site by site, priced as its own architecture rather than as a multiple of one line.
What sets the number on a quoted system
Every quoted system is priced against the same drivers, and every one of them is a separate line in the proposal.
- Source class and power. The source is specified against the material: fibre at about 1064 nm on steel, stainless, aluminium and titanium, pulse-controlled MOPA where pulse duration, repetition rate and pulse energy have to move independently, green at 515 or 532 nm on copper and brass, UV at 355 nm on glass, ceramics, PCBs and heat sensitive plastics, CO2 at 9.3, 10.2 or 10.6 micron on timber, board and coated surfaces, and ultrafast where a heat affected zone is itself the defect. Which class your material takes is settled in the capability study before the source line is quoted, so it reaches the proposal as a specified part against a measured parameter set rather than as an allowance.
- Head count. A typical timber brand on a single galvo head holds across 40 to 120 m/min, and a full height dense brand, around 40 mm high and up to roughly 600 mm long, tops out around 75 to 85 m/min on one head, because the ceiling is how much stroke length one scanning mirror pair can draw in the time the part spends in its field of view, so above that the specification is a second head sharing the mark on the same encoder, and that second head is a line in the quote. Beam time is path length, not area.
- Line rate and part presentation. A station marking a stationary part and a galvo head marking on the fly against the encoder, with the mark geometry compensated for line velocity so it stays true on a moving surface, are different builds carrying different numbers.
- Fixturing and modules. Conveyors, rotaries, jigs, extraction and filtration, safety enclosures and interlocks, camera and vision alignment, and counterbalanced arm and handheld heads, designed and built in our Nelson facility around the part you actually run rather than around a catalogue default.
- Integration depth. Whether the station runs standalone, or the Light Lane Control Layer reads the PLC tag that identifies the part at the head, pulls the job, batch or serial from the system that already owns it, and writes the completion back with timestamp, operator, machine and station, through the connection pattern your IT team sanctions across REST or SOAP, a read-only database view, a watched file drop, a message queue, an OPC UA or Modbus TCP tag read, and middleware you already run. The priced work is the interface specification, the field mapping and the failure behaviour, so where the pattern your IT team sanctions runs over middleware you already own, the transport is not a line in the quote and the specification still is.
- Safety and guarding. Class 4 laser safety is enclosure, interlocks, beam containment and a rated safety circuit, specified to ISO 11553-1, IEC 60825-1, IEC 60204-1 and ISO 13849-1. It is part of the install specification rather than an accessory, and it is priced as one.
- Lines and sites. A programme across sites is priced as reference design, group standard split from site local, and per-site survey, commissioning and signed acceptance. Sites after the first are quoted without design and specification, because the reference design is already written and held in change control, so what remains in the number is survey, build, commissioning and acceptance.
- Commissioning and training. Install, alignment, calibration, safety sign-off, integration cutover under your change control, and a first-run validation pass on real parts at real line rate against acceptance criteria agreed before the build. Operators, shift leads and maintenance are trained on your own jobs until they run it without us in the room, and more than one person is trained, because a single trained operator takes annual leave.
- Support tier and spares. Severity tiers defined in plant language, a named escalation ladder, remote diagnostics on the software and integration side, on-site attendance where the tier calls for it, software updates for the life of the system, and a spares holding agreed at commissioning against the parts that would actually stop the line. That holding is quoted as its own line and sized against what one minute of the line is worth, which is the same figure the worksheet below runs on.
What the category costs, published by third parties
Published market benchmarks put tier one laser coder installations in the USD 20,000 to 50,000 range, and integrated marking cells with fixturing and line integration in the USD 50,000 to 150,000 range. Those are third-party figures for the category rather than a Light Lane quote. They are international equipment figures and they carry no guarding, extraction, fixturing, integration or install, so they work as an order of magnitude check and nothing more.
A Light Lane number comes out of the site scope, priced in NZD against your actual part, your actual line rate and your actual position on the line, itemised against the drivers above and issued in writing. Where we land inside or outside the third-party range is a conversation with the reasons attached, driver by driver.
Two structural points move the arithmetic further than any single driver. Consumables arrive with an invoice and coder stops do not, so the invoice is the number that reaches the business case, and on plenty of lines it is the smaller half. And the capital is a five to seven year asset while the consumables are not, so a one year comparison window produces a negative answer regardless of how strong the case is. The worksheet below settles both, and every figure in it comes off your own records.
The annual cost of coding as it is done today
This is the structure we run at scope, published so you can run it first. Fill in the right hand side from your ledger and your line data and the annual number is on the table inside an hour. The variable that moves the result more than any other is what one minute of that line is worth, and your operations or finance team already holds it. Once it is on the table, every downtime row resolves in about a minute.
| What to measure | Where the number lives in your plant | How to express it |
|---|---|---|
| Ink spend, last 12 months | Purchase ledger, coder consumables account. Count every head on the site, not only the one you are thinking about replacing. | NZD per year |
| Make-up solvent spend, last 12 months | Same account. This is the line most sites underestimate, because solvent evaporates during running rather than going onto product. | NZD per year |
| Freight, storage and handling of consumables | Freight invoices, plus the dangerous goods storage the drums occupy, plus the admin time spent ordering, receiving and rotating stock before shelf life. | NZD per year |
| Head servicing, spares and contract | Service agreement, plus unplanned callouts, plus filters, nozzles, pumps and printheads replaced over the last three years divided by three. | NZD per year |
| Stoppage minutes attributable to the coder | Downtime log or line OEE data filtered to the coder. Include planned cleans, blockage stops, and the periods the line was held back to hold print quality. | Minutes per year |
| What one minute of that line is worth | Output rate times contribution per unit, or the figure your production manager already uses when justifying a line upgrade. Use the number they will defend, not the optimistic one. | NZD per minute |
| Rework, downgrade and reprint caused by bad marks | Parts or packs re-marked before dispatch, stock downgraded, consignments queried on arrival. Ask the dispatch supervisor, because this rarely reaches a system. | NZD per year |
| Operator hours on the coder | Head cleans, ink and solvent changes, viscosity checks, restarts and shift change data entry. Hours per week times the loaded hourly rate times 52. | NZD per year |
The other side of the arithmetic, itemised the same way
Add those eight rows together and you have the real annual cost of coding the way you code now. It is almost always larger than the ink invoice people quote from memory, because rows three, five, seven and eight sit in other departments' budgets.
Against it sits the laser side. Capital cost of the station. Install and guarding. Power for the source, chiller and extraction, quoted as a kW figure at the scoping visit that you put against your own industrial rate. Annual service. And two real consumables: the protective window in front of the optics, a wear item replaced on a schedule set by the actual dust and resin load on your line, and the extraction filter. No ink, no solvent, no dangerous goods storage, no shelf life, no viscosity. Day to day maintenance is a lens check the operator does in a couple of minutes, with no purge cycle and no fluid to handle.
Subtract the laser annual from the current annual and you have the annual saving. Divide the installed capital by the annual saving and you have payback in years, run across the asset life rather than across one year.
A laser removes a consumable cost. If your ink and solvent spend is small and the line runs a few hours a week, there is no payback to find and no arithmetic that will produce one, so the worksheet runs at the scope rather than after a proposal, and it is the object that shows which way the number falls. That takes an hour and it belongs to you either way.
The business case a CFO can defend
At this size the question is justification rather than access to capital. Four categories carry the case, and each one resolves into a figure that comes off your own line rather than off a brochure.
Where the value lands
Throughput and labour recovered, rework and scrap avoided, recall exposure and audit cost bounded, and register accuracy on assets that leave and return. The Site Acceptance Record is what turns those from a projection into a measurement: it is signed on your line, on your product, against criteria written before the build started, and the rollout case for every site after the first is written from the numbers inside it. A CFO who can defend the number does not need a lender.
- Throughput and labour recovered: head cleans, solvent changes, viscosity checks, restarts and shift change data entry come off the line, and the mark is composed per part from the record that already holds it, so your operator never types a code
- Rework, downgrade and reprint avoided: the mark carries the identifier your ERP or MES generated against the job it already opened, and the station never invents an identifier, never substitutes a default and never increments a serial itself, which removes the class of error where a plausible but incorrect code reaches a real part
- Recall exposure and audit cost bounded: item-level identity formed in the material survives the wash, so a recall is bounded to a pallet rather than a week of production, and the completion record written back with timestamp, operator, machine and station is an audit trail produced without an auditor
- Register accuracy on returnable assets: a returnable asset nobody can identify has already been partly written off, and an asset you cannot identify is an asset you will buy twice
- Measured rather than projected: acceptance criteria agreed after commissioning are a negotiation, and written before the build they are engineering, which is why the numbers the rollout case runs on come from a signed record rather than from a forecast
Where the mechanism behind each number is set out
Laser against ink coding
The incumbent mechanism explained in full, then the structural argument, then how the method is selected against the substrate, the code and the consumable spend.
Multi-site programme architecture
Reference design, controlled replication, the outbound-only security posture, and integration set once for the group rather than negotiated site by site.
How the capital is structured
Three routes cover most programmes: bought outright, funded through your own equipment facility, or released gate by gate against the acceptance record. The staged route is our own mechanism and it is the one that moves where the money sits, because each gate is invoiced as its artefact closes, so a programme running across a year end is paid across two budget periods instead of being committed inside one. Where an operation wants an equipment finance route and has no facility in place, we introduce Crediflex, a New Zealand commercial finance broker. Scope, specification and price are identical whichever route you take, and terms and approval sit between you and the financier.
On the staged route, payment is released against the gates. Exposure at any point in the programme is capped at the value of the stage in progress, and the final release is tied to the Site Acceptance Record signed on your line, on your product. How each gate is defined, what artefact closes it and what it releases is set out on programme assurance.
How each route is scoped and priced
The rows below are different objects rather than sizes of one object, and they sit orders of magnitude apart. A programme engineers a marking line into a plant and is priced against the drivers above. The desktop application licenses the controller-aware core on a machine you already own and is billed per seat per month. The table states each on its own terms.
| Route | How it is priced | Where it fits | What the number covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise programme | Scoped and quoted as architecture | Multi-site rollouts running one group standard | Reference design, group standard split from site local, identifier standards and the interface specification set once for the group, per-site survey, commissioning and signed acceptance record, support tier design |
| Industrial system | Scoped and quoted per line | Manufacturing, timber, food and meat processing, packhouse, logistics, marine and precision engineering | Source and head count specified against the material and the line rate, fixturing and modules, ERP or MES integration through the sanctioned connection pattern, safety and extraction, commissioning on your parts, training, support tier, spares and warranty |
| Business system | Scoped and quoted per line | A single in-house line for signage and branded production | Hardware, software, modules, install, training and support for one line, running the same core as the industrial layer |
| Business software | Scoped and quoted | An operation configuring the software around its own workflow on hardware it already owns | Software setup, configuration and onboarding shaped to the operation, with machine profiles saved against the hardware you run |
| Education package | Scoped and quoted | Schools running a managed laser capability | The unit specified for the room, installation, training on real controller output, and ongoing support |
| Pro | $24 USD per seat per month | Shops and repeat commercial work on a machine already on the floor | Production tools, material testing, calibration and priority support on the same controller-aware core |
| Maker | $12 USD per seat per month | Individual makers running straightforward engraving jobs | Import, preview and engrave workflow across common G-code controller paths, with a 14-day trial and no card |
The desktop application on a single machine
Maker and Pro
The desktop application and the industrial marking layer run on the same controller-aware core, written in Nelson, and the figures below are from that core. Maker is $12 USD per seat per month and Pro is $24 USD per seat per month, both with a 14-day trial and no credit card, so the application runs against your own jobs before anything is paid for.
- One internal, dialect-neutral motion program emitted into GRBL, Marlin, Smoothieware and Generic, each with its own laser-on command, travel strategy, power scale and streaming discipline, with power scaling read off the controller's own $30 value at connect time rather than assumed. Ruida runs as an external bridge and is labelled alpha.
- Heat map preview showing the generated toolpath colour coded by power rather than the source artwork, so a bad setting is caught on screen instead of on the workpiece
- Pro adds material testing, calibration tools and priority support for repeat commercial work, with machine profiles and saved setup carried between jobs
- Every licence state transition is available offline, with activation and lease signatures verified locally and secrets held in the operating system credential store rather than in a file on disk
Read the engineering
The controller-aware core
The engine at engineering depth: dialect-neutral motion emission, the vector and raster pipelines with their tolerances, and the correct status label on every feature.
Download and trial
Run the application against your own jobs and your own controller before choosing a paid plan.
Where each scoped route is set out in full
Start here
Industrial systems
One control layer across timber, food and meat processing, packhouse, logistics, marine and precision engineering, with the source and the parameter set changing per substrate.
Enterprise programmes
Reference design, controlled replication across sites, the air-gap and security posture, and integration set once for the group.
Business production
The entry point into the same core: in-house signage and branded production capability, scoped and priced for one line.
Continuity, assurance and handover
The named document set, the acceptance gates, the staged payment structure and the operational handover pack.
Questions asked before a proposal is requested
How is a quoted number built?
Driver by driver, from the site scope. Source class and power, head count, line rate and part presentation, fixturing and modules, integration depth, safety and guarding, commissioning, training, support tier and spares are each priced as their own line, so a buying group can see what buys what. The proposal is issued in writing with those lines visible, and it is built on a capability study run on your own material rather than on a published envelope.
How long does it take to reach a number?
Send a part and the numbered capability report comes back on that part. A site scope is half a day on your floor, covering what the part is, what happens to it after marking, what the line actually runs at, where identity breaks today, which system already owns the job data, and what your control engineer will sanction on the network. A single-line project moves from there to a written proposal faster than a multi-site programme with governance requirements, and the scope ends with a decision on feasibility in writing either way.
What is in a proposal, and what is quoted separately?
The proposal itemises hardware, the software configured for your parts and materials, modules such as fixturing or a conveyor, integration against your existing systems, on-site install and commissioning, operator training, spares and the support tier as separate lines. Additions beyond the agreed scope, a second part family, another material, one more site or an extra field on the mark, become a scoped and priced stage of their own.
What does ongoing support cost?
Support is scoped and priced inside the proposal rather than added afterwards. You choose a tier against the operation, and the tier definitions, what is handled remotely, what triggers site attendance and the escalation ladder are fixed. What moves the tier price is how far the site sits from an engineer, how many shifts the line runs, and how much spares holding is already on your own floor, because each of those changes what standing by costs to provide. The tier you choose is a priced line in the proposal you approve rather than a renewal that appears afterwards. Software updates run for the life of the system.
Can a programme start with one line?
Yes, and for a multi-line or multi-site plan it is the usual path. The pilot is deliberately the hardest line on the site rather than the easiest, and how that selection is made is set out on programme assurance. Pricing it that way puts the worst case on your floor into the first number, which is what makes the per-site figures after it hold. It is accepted on your own parts, documented as a reference design, and priced as its own stage. If the group decides against rolling out further, that line keeps running, keeps being supported, and keeps its reference design.
How does a programme differ from buying a marking machine on its own?
A machine purchase delivers a head with its own controller. The fixturing, the part presentation, cycle time against your line rate, the ERP round trip, the operator process, the acceptance criteria and the documentation are the programme, and that is where the cost and the risk actually sit. The source is a catalogue item from an established manufacturer, bought through its New Zealand channel, and it is the smallest part of the engineering.
Can the desktop application run first and a system follow later?
Yes. Maker or Pro run the same controller-aware core on hardware already on your floor, and a systems conversation starts whenever the mark has to be composed from your own records, fired at line rate and written back against the job. The core is deployment-form independent, so the step up is a different physical form and a different integration depth rather than a different product.
What does the first stage commit us to?
The capability study and the site scope are priced and run as their own engagement, and they are the recommended starting point. They produce a numbered capability report and a written scope, and both are yours to keep and to tender against. What each later stage commits you to, and what artefact releases each gate, is set out on programme assurance.
Send us a part
The capability study and the site scope are priced and run as their own engagement, and together they are what a quoted number is built from. Between them they settle the drivers that move it furthest: the source class your material takes, the head count your line rate takes, and how deep the integration against the system that already owns the job has to go. Both artefacts belong to you and are detailed enough to tender against, whether or not a proposal follows them.
Last updated August 21, 2026