Badges, coins, awards, and serials. Made in-house.
Badges and name plates, challenge coins, recognition awards, plaques and memorials, signage, evidence and equipment marking, and serial numbers on metal parts for your armorer. One compact laser bench brings the metal work and the recognition work back under your own roof, from your own art, on your own timeline.
Most agencies and LE vendors start with the Aurora 8-100W MOPA, starting at $11,000.
US support from coast to coast and over 1,000 five-star reviews on Trustpilot.
The badge, the coin, and the plaque all live at somebody else’s shop.
A retirement is next week and the plaque is still at the trophy shop. A new class graduates and the badges are on backorder. A unit wants a run of challenge coins and the vendor wants a four-week lead time and a minimum you do not need. Every one of these is a small job that matters to a real person, and every one of them waits on somebody else’s calendar and somebody else’s markup. Meanwhile the armorer wants to serialize a few parts and that goes out too, to a shop that does not know your work. The little stuff never stops: an award for the banquet, a name plate for a new hire, a memorial that has to be right, a sign for the range. Each one is a phone call, a proof, and a wait. A compact laser bench brings all of it home.
One bench puts the timeline, the quality, and the budget back in your hands.
Bring the metal work and the recognition work in-house and the whole rhythm changes. No more waiting on a vendor’s queue for a plaque that is due Friday. No more minimum orders on a run of coins you only needed a dozen of. You control how it looks, when it is done, and what it costs, and you keep the money that used to leave the building on every order. For an LE vendor it also opens up work you used to turn away, the rush award, the custom coin, the one-off memorial, because now the capability sits on your own bench.
Metal work that looks the part
Deep, permanent, clean marks on the metals badges and coins are made from: stainless, brass, aluminum, nickel-plated stock, and more. A fiber or MOPA laser cuts crisp seals, unit emblems, names, dates, and serials, the same on every piece, with color on stainless and titanium when the MOPA is dialed in.
Recognition on your own timeline
Awards, plaques, memorials, and signage engraved from your own art the day you need them. Camera placement means the same layout lands in the same spot every time, so a run of coins or name plates matches piece to piece and a rush award is done in-house instead of waiting on a proof and a lead time.
Serials for the armory, in the building
An agency armorer can put permanent serial numbers on metal parts right in your own shop instead of sending them out. The mark is repeatable from your own files and does not smear or rub off. Serialization depth and the rules that apply to your work stay your responsibility; the machine just lays the mark down cleanly.
The metals badges are made from, and everything an award is made from too.
Metal is the heart of LE work: stainless, brass, aluminum, and plated badge and coin stock, marked deep and clean by a fiber or MOPA laser. On the recognition side a CO2 laser cuts and engraves the wood, acrylic, glass, leather, and coated metal that plaques, awards, signage, and gifts are made from. Between the two, most of what crosses your bench is covered.
Not sure how your badge stock, your coin blank, or your award material takes the mark? That is what the free sample is for. Send a few pieces of your real material, blanks, offcuts, or extras, and we will run them and tell you straight whether it is a good fit.
A few hard rules we will not bend, for the safety of your people and the machine.
PVC and vinyl release hydrogen chloride, a corrosive gas that is bad for your people and the machine, and ABS releases hydrogen cyanide, so we never cut either. Polycarbonate browns and does not cut clean. Plated and coated stock is usually fine to surface mark, but if you cannot name the coating, the answer is no until you can. We will always tell you the truth about a material instead of selling you a result we cannot stand behind.
Badges, coins, awards and serials, back under your own roof.
What a laser does for a department shop, what you can mark and what to avoid, and the three machines law enforcement shops actually buy.
No cost, and no sales call required to read it.
From the badge on the chest to the plaque on the wall.
The same bench turns out the things an agency and its vendors make all year: badges and name plates, challenge coins, retirement and service awards, memorial plaques, range and facility signage, evidence and equipment tags, and serialized metal parts for the armory. Made in-house, on your schedule, instead of ordered out and waited on.
Four series, one honest recommendation.
Law enforcement work splits into two halves: marking metal for badges, coins, and serials, and cutting and engraving the awards, plaques, and signage around them. Here is the whole lineup, with the series we point most agencies and LE vendors to called out first. We will tell you straight which one your work actually needs.
Aurora
The metal-marking machine. Deep, permanent, clean marks on badges, name plates, challenge coins, and serialized parts in stainless, brass, and aluminum, placed by camera so every piece matches. The MOPA can add color on stainless and titanium. This is the one that puts the metal work in-house.
Nova Plus
The CO2 machine for the recognition side: awards, plaques, memorials, and signage in wood, acrylic, glass, leather, and coated metal. Cut and engrave them the same day from your own art instead of ordering them out and waiting on a proof and a lead time.
Bolt
The engraving specialist. Fast, high-detail engraving on a compact bed, a strong fit when your work is mostly small pieces like name plates, coins, tags, and gifts and you care more about speed and fine detail than a large cutting area.
Titan
The production step-up. A 220v machine on the premium tube with the fastest engraving in the lineup, built to run hard all day for a vendor whose award and signage volume has outgrown the Nova Plus and needs more speed.
All four run on a standard 110v outlet except the Titan, which is the 220v production step-up. Every machine ships nationwide on a liftgate truck with the LightBurn software included (licensed for two computers, the computer is yours), one free hour of remote training, US support from coast to coast, and a 2 year machine warranty. For surface marks on glass awards and plastics, the Aurora 8-5W UV is the specialty tool, and the Thunder Air 700 handles fume in-house with no outside duct. Not sure which your work needs? Request a free sample and we will tell you straight.
Straight prices, honest advice, and a mark you can stand behind.
We publish our prices
A lot of the marking-machine world will not tell you what anything costs until a rep has your number, which is no way to run a purchase order through an agency. Our prices are right on the page. What you see is what the machine costs, and the sample that proves it fits is free.
We tell you which tool your job needs
Sometimes that is the cheaper machine. Sometimes your work is mostly awards and signage and a CO2 is all you need, or mostly badges and coins and it is a fiber, and we will say which. A vendor who only ever recommends his most expensive machine is not advising you, he is selling you.
Work you can be proud to hand over
A badge, a memorial, and a retirement award all have to be right, because a real person is going to carry them and remember them. The laser lays down clean, permanent, repeatable marks from your own art, every time. Backed by US support from coast to coast and a 2 year machine warranty.
You are not just buying a laser. You are buying the people behind it.
US support, coast to coast, from people who actually run these machines.
When you put agency money on a machine, the real question is not just whether it marks clean. It is who is actually in your corner when something needs a hand and a banquet is on the calendar. With Thunder Laser that is a real US-based team, coast to coast, that knows these machines inside out, not an overseas ticket queue and not a reseller who has never run one.
More than a thousand owners have said exactly that in five-star reviews. We are early in serving law enforcement specifically, and we will tell you that straight, but these are the same machines that put down badges, coins, awards, and serials in shops all over the country, and the same team stands behind every one. You start with one free hour of remote training, every machine carries a 2 year warranty, and you get honest answers, including when the answer is no.
See it marked on your own material. Free.
No spec sheet tells you how your badge stock, your coin blank, or your award material takes the mark. So we will just show you. This is a free sample to show what the machine can do, its quality and its detail. It is not a production run, and we do not take in finished goods or fill orders.
Tell us your material
On the short form, tell us your material and the simple mark or cut you want to see, within reason, so we can confirm it is a good fit before we run it.
Mail us a few pieces
Send a few pieces of your actual material to our shop. We will send the address. Badge blanks, coin blanks, award stock, or offcuts, a piece of your material, not a finished piece.
We run it and send it back
You get your sample back with the exact settings we used, so you can see the quality and the detail with your own eyes before you decide. No cost, no pressure.
Send a few pieces, not just one. We do not know the perfect settings for every metal, coating, and award material on sight, so a few pieces give us room to dial it in and show the best the machine can really do.
Only send material you are okay with us using up. Samples are for testing, so treat anything you send as something we may consume getting the settings right. Send raw, nameable material, never finished badges or issued gear.
Law enforcement questions, answered straight.
Can it really make a badge that looks as good as what we buy now?
Our armorer wants to serialize parts. Can the laser do that, and what about ATF?
Most of our work is awards and plaques, not metal. Which machine is that?
What metals and finishes will it mark, and what will it not?
We do not make that many pieces a year. Is a laser still worth it?
What power and space do I need, and can I finance it?
Send us your material. We will mark it free.
Fill out the short form and a real person from our team follows up. No pressure, no spam, just a clean mark on your own material and straight answers. Blanks, offcuts, and raw stock only, never finished badges or issued gear.
Prefer to talk it through first? Schedule a sales call.
Not ready to send a sample? Take the guide instead.
Download the guide