About us

We are designers, makers, engineers, entrepreneurs and laser enthusiasts. Since 2012, we've been helping people like you produce their own designs.

Snijlab makes laser cutting in wood and plastic easy and accessible. Through a convenient online ordering environment, helpful support, the best materials, and prompt delivery.

This allows you to produce easily and cost-effectively. Whether you create unique projects, want to produce custom parts, market your own product or just want to experiment, we make it easy.

We do this so that you can make it with your product.

Founders of Snijlab

In 2009, Christian Waber and Jiskar Schmitz founded Snijlab, since then they have been committed to making laser cutting accessible to everyone.

Timeline

Establishment of Snijlab

Snijlab was founded by Christian Waber and Jiskar Schmitz. They built the first version of the SpotMini laser cutting machine.

Timeline

First online order taking system in the Netherlands

Snijlab developed the first online order taking system for laser cutting. On this site, customers could upload their drawing themselves and immediately see a quote.

This meant that customers no longer had to email and wait for a quote for laser cutting.

Timeline

Sninge design viral

Snijlab designed a laser-cuttable living hinge, later called Sninge (cutting lab hinge) by the community. This line pattern makes wood flexible so that you can use it to make a topper, for example.

The design is open source and has received a lot of attention, including in Make magazine, Hackaday, Designboom, Dezeen and many others.

Timeline

4x New generation laser cutter

Snijlab developed a second generation of the Spotmini laser cutter.

With innovative features such as dynamic autofocus and optimized nozzles for extra clean cutting results.

These faithful and solid machines cut many different types of materials.

Timeline

The first fully automatic laser cutter for non-metals

With almost 10 years of knowledge of laser cutting productions, we now also know the downsides of the technology. And that is why Snijlab developed the autoSPOT.

AutoSPOT is a fully automatic laser cutter that can run productions independently. The machine loads material itself, cuts without smoke and products come out automatically. This reduces manual labor enormously.

Timeline

Covid protection

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, traditional factories were slow to start up and transportation was made difficult. This created a global shortage of protective equipment.

For the hospital staff at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, Snijlab designed a face shield in record time that was made entirely from laser-cut parts and could be made from available materials.

The screens were put together by volunteers. In total, more than 50,000 face shields have been delivered.

Timeline

Hammer connection design

Snijlab designs a no-screw-no-glue hammer connection, completely laser cut. Inspired by traditional woodworking, we drew a connection for digital production. Cut from the same sheet as the rest of the object, no other material is needed to secure anything.

We share the hammer connection through the creative commons, we hope that others can improve the connection this way.