Laser Technology Brings Business to Tourist Village

When Saudi Arabians wanted to make multilingual signs for an airport, they found the modern laser technology they needed in an unlikely place--a tiny tourist village in northwestern Wisconsin.

“Lasers in Somerset is a bit ludicrous,” admits Rita Lawson, who helped found and helps operate Laser Machining Inc. with her husband, William.

But that hasn’t stopped the Lawsons from turning a basement operation into a $2-million-a-year company whose special technology competes in international markets.

Lawson, 38, said the Saudis learned of their firm through another U.S. company. The complex twists and turns of Arabic, combined with other languages on the airport signs, would have been difficult and expensive to duplicate through ordinary sign-making techniques. With lasers, a black and white copy of the signs could easily be duplicated.

Laser Machining provided the Saudis with the machine and sent a worker to the Middle East to train the operators of the new equipment.

Now Employs 40

Lawson said he never dreamed seven years ago that his hobby would turn into a firm that employs 40 people, a major company for a village of 800. Laser Machining’s new building is the sole structure in Somerset’s “industrial park.”

Although Somerset--a community known mainly for camping and inner-tube trips down the Apple River--appears remote, the one-hour drive to Minneapolis-St. Paul has helped business.

Lawson was an engineering consultant when he first became acquainted with lasers. The technology fascinated him.

“The second time I ever saw a laser, we had one in our basement,” he said.

Lawson had no intention of building his interest into a “monster” company, but he nonetheless quickly found customers for the various applications of his lasers. Business boomed and Mrs. Lawson quit teaching to become a company vice president.

Projects now under way range from decorative laser engraving to cutting of intricate shapes in industrial packing foam--which might crumble using other techniques--to the exacting process of cutting plastic circles to be used as video discs.

The three-faceted operation at Laser Machining consists of highly specialized jobs done for other firms, development and sales of laser equipment and the repair of existing lasers.

The lasers are not the flashy, colorful beams popular in music light shows. The industrial lasers are operated by carbon dioxide gas that makes it easier to penetrate materials ranging from thin plastic to dense metals.

At times, it has been tough to help customers overcome that image.

“You have to bring them down from Star Wars,” William Lawson said. “We can’t get that (laser) beam inside a little gun.

Lasers are created when gases enter a glass tube and are hit with high volts of electricity. This serves to “excite” atomic particles that bounce between mirrors on either end of the tube to form a strong light beam of about 0.005 inch. The beam appears to cut or burn through materials, but actually “vaporizes” anything in its way.

Superior for Many Uses

The precise nature of laser beams and their ability to reproduce any black and white pattern or drawing makes them superior to conventional cutting technology for many uses.

Nevertheless, lasers are expected to replace conventional technology in less than 10% of industrial processes because the large amount of electricity they draw makes them expensive to use.

Laser Machining is the fourth largest “job shop” operation--where laser projects are tailor-made for contracting companies--in the nation. Lawson said his firm is considered a middle-range company among the estimated 250 laser operations in the United States.

Laser sales, now at $400 million nationwide, are expected to be 10 times larger by the early 1990s.