Originally Posted by
Dave Sheldrake
A very nice piece of art, not something i would hang on my wall but very nice all the same.
The fact it was done on a GF is academic and a bit of a disassociation. He's clearly a talented and gifted chap but there is nothing that would support the use of a GF laser in what he is doing.
What it will do is reinforce the idea that everybody who has a GF on order will become artists or money makers just by buying one. Given the umber of people I've seen posting pictures of unsellable widgets believing they have the foundation of a self supporting business there are going to be a lot of unhappy buyers in the near future.
A laser is NOT Kelton-D Cylinder press that prints dollar bills, that's where the confusion lays.....buying even a huge 10+ kW CO2 will not make money unless you have something marketable to make with it. I have a $5,000 laser that is currently next to me that is in front of a $1,000,000+ laser. On any given day the $5,000 laser will often generate more hard income than the $1mil + machine. it all depends what the work schedule is and what has to go through the works on any given day.
I could cut much of the stuff I do with a scroll saw or handsaw given enough time, it all comes down to ROT, Return On Time.....
Taking in depreciation, maintenance, initial purchase price and general wear and tear, the machine out of all of mine that has made me the most hard currency over time cost me under $10,000 to buy. Simply because no matter how badly I treat it, how much lack of care it receives and whatever goes wrong with it...it keeps banging out hard currency every day. It's 8 years old, other than tubes has cost me under $500 in those 8 years to keep running. The big Mitsu costs me $1,500 for a lens cartridge on a frighteningly regular basis.it will cut the sheets I need to at 15% less speed than any other laser I have yet costs 1 50/th of what they cost to run.
GF is slow, innacurate (placement is currently 1/4 inch out on the lid camera) has limited filter life and a tube that will last about 18 months at best all backed up by an operating system that goes down if the internet crashes out (which it does here in West Wales on a regular basis) Any kind of minimal fire is going to write the machine off in pretty short order (it has a LOT of plastic in it) and at the moment I couldn't buy one even if I wanted to as UK / EU border control would seize and crush the thing as it doesn't have required documentation.
Short version?
Kev hit the mark in five words
"time IS in fact money"