Welcome to the B-Engraved Blog: What We're Building (and Why)

Hi, I'm Bronson, owner of B-Engraved LLC. If you've ordered a custom necklace, tumbler, or UNI piece from us, thank you. This blog is where I'll share what's happening behind the scenes: new products, what's coming up in the shop, and a software project I've been pouring a lot of late nights into.

What's new in the shop

Big news first: you can now design your own product right on our website. Pick a product, add your text, choose from our symbols, or upload a photo, and you'll see a live preview of exactly how it will look engraved before you add it to your cart. No more back-and-forth emails trying to describe what you want. It went live in late September and has already handled real orders from start to finish.

Meet ZoneForge

To make that customizer work, I had to solve a problem every laser engraver runs into: where exactly can the laser mark on each product? A necklace with a heart cutout, a tumbler, a dog tag with a hole. Every item has its own "safe zone," and if a design drifts outside it, the piece is ruined.

So I built a tool called ZoneForge. You load a photo of a product, trace the area the laser can reach, and it saves the exact measurements. It handles curves, cutouts, and holes, so a design automatically avoids spots it shouldn't touch. I've used it to map every product in our store.

Where it's headed

ZoneForge started as a tool just for me, but I realized other small engraving shops face the same headache. My long-term goal is to offer ZoneForge and the customizer to other makers so they can let their customers design products online too. I'm testing everything on my own store first, because I'd rather cut a feature than sell something I don't trust.

Follow along

I'll post updates here as ZoneForge grows, along with new products and shop news. If you're a fellow engraver and this sounds useful, reach out at buitenwerfengraves@gmail.com. And if you want to try the customizer yourself, head to the shop and start designing.

Thanks for supporting a small business in Cedar Falls!

— Bronson