Story by John DeWitt -
The
Ray Zukowski may be
the archetypal entrepreneur.
After 14 years of
designing/building trade show exhibits for AT&T, Zukowski quit, took his
savings and some investments, and devoted five years to developing a new
process for etching glass and other hard surfaces that may revolutionize an
industry.
Now, he hopes his
perfected process and his company, Rayzist Photomask Inc., will make him rich.
Zukowski's invention
involves using photographic techniques to make an adhesive mask that can be
applied to glass, tile, stone or any other hard material. The material
can then be sandblasted to cut a the pattern into its surface.
When he quit the
graphic arts company that custom built trade show exhibits for AT&T,
Zukowski, a
Located on the main
road through Summerhaven, people kept stopping and asking if I knew a place
they could rent in the mountains for a few days," Zukowski recalls.
The sideline developed into a 6 cabin complex along with a bakery specializing in giant chocolate chip cookies, right next door to the Living Rainbow gift shop.
Zukowski, clearly had photomasking for etching and carving in mind for his principal focus at that time.
Using the method, a
design of any kind - whether a corporate logo or your 5-year-old's picture, could be cut into the surface of a glass or coffee mug.
At the new Loews
Ventana Canyon Resort, all of the guest room door numbers and directional signs were
blasted into stone using the Rayzist Photomask process.
Zukowski says the
Ventana job came about after talking with Doug Seaver who was the architect of the La Paloma resort. Zukowski had already completed the hundreds of etched bathroom windows for La Paloma earlier that year. He and one other company bid, but the
other company dropped out because they couldn't blast the unique lettering style Ventana required.
At the entrance of the
new resort a giant boulder with the resorts name carved deeply into its face
was done by Rayzist. The etching has the look of something that should
have taken a skilled stone carver weeks of hand labor to accomplish.
"It took about 16 hours of actual blasting time" Zukowski says.
Timing-saving and
simplicity are the real strengths of the new system, say Zukowski, adding that
the new process allows much more intricate design to be etched onto surfaces
than did old methods involving rubber or metal masks.
As an example, Zukowski shows off an on-the-rocks glass with the "A and eagle" logo of Anheuser-Busch deeply etched into it side. Just below and to the right of the A is the small circle-R mark indicating that the trade-mark is registered. It is tiny, but crystal clear. Before his photomasking process came along, detail that small would have been impossible, Zukowski says.
Old methods using
metal and rubber masks also resulted in what is called
"undercutting," in which some of the abrasive powder that etches the
glass would creep under the edge of the mask and slightly blur the image.
With photomasking, that is no longer a problem.
After descending from
the mountaintop, Zukowski started his company in 1983 in his garage. In the
first year, Rayzist which was incorporated in 1984 grossed $250,000 in sales.
This year, he says, he
expects to do double that or more. The Fenton Art Co of
But Zukowski has bigger ideas. He holds up a coffee mug with the likeness of a small child etched into its side and says he is negotiating with a major entertainment company to produce mugs and glasses with pictures of children, family dogs and what ever else they want engraved. (2018 Update) Ray missed this one with the invention of the Ink Jet Printer on any surface but caught up with a new idea in 2022.
Then, with a bit of a
gleam in his eye, Zukowski explains that the new method is so simple -- a
photomask can be exposed and developed and applied to a glass mug or piece of
tile and an image sandblasted into the surface in less than five minutes --
that eventually "there'll be a shop in every shopping mall in the country
to do it,"
Zukowski, who invested
$60,000 in the process, has a patent pending.
Meanwhile, his first
shop after moving out of his 400 sq. ft. garage was a 1,500 sq. ft. building
located in the 3800 block off
Thanks John for your 1985 Story.
The STORY Before the News Paper
Today in the year 2023, Rayzist is currently operating out of a 33,000 sq. ft. building, owned by Ray's first employee Randy Willis who helped Ray retire in 1995. Randy has currently over 55+ employees in
Thirty eight years in the making. Do you really want to hear what happened over all those years?
I thought you might or you wouldn't be reading this now.
As I sit here about to tell you the rest of the story Kassie and I are currently located in our new house in Woodstock Georgia.
Our goal after leaving Salt Lake City, Utah in Oct of 2021 was to spend 2022 traveling, winter in south Florida & summer up near family in northern Georgia.
Let's get started. We have much to share and hundreds of pictures to help tell our latest story. To be fare maybe I should let you see our most current adventures first.
OK? Click on Nuggets and it will take you back to our Index. Go all the way down to Ray & Kassie Travels.
How did this whole thing ever get started?
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT
I can't tell my 50+ year story here, right now. There is way too much information. I think it best if I tell my story chapter by chapter. The News story Mr. DeWitt wrote above was just what had happened in the early '80's. The full story started ten years earlier and even today Rayzist keeps expanding into the entire world.
Only GOD knows when HE wrote the Ten Commandments on stone what HE had in mind for this Tucson boy allowing him to be issued a US Patent for writing on stone. What are the odds of that happening?
Let's begin at the real beginning of Rayzist
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