new laser wondering about 100 watt vs 120 watt

[stan kern]

Just before i order my laser i was wondering if there is a good reason to go 120 watt vs 100 watt ?
I work with wood,glass,marble,granite,some metals

[Lee DeRaud]

On the one hand, with those materials you'll rarely be running the thing at full power anyway, so I'm not sure what the extra power gives you.

On the other hand, once you're up into that price range, is there enough price difference between the two to really matter?

[stan kern]

i appreciate the answer

[James Stokes]

I have a 100 watt, I would buy the 120 myself. It will help you on cutting plus the speed of running the job.I disagree With Lee I generally use full power and adjust speed as needed. I also like a deeper depth on my rastering. It makes color fill much easier. Also for instance if I am working with brass and aluminum I can run at a much faster speed. Time is money. When I first recieved my 100 watt I could cut 3/4 oak like butter. I have lost enough power I can not do it now.

[Lee DeRaud]

I disagree With Lee I generally use full power and adjust speed as needed.Are these big machines that fast?!? For granite/marble, I'm finding that it's more a case of full speed and adjust power as needed...and that's with a 25-30W machine. Even rastering glass/mirror and wood, I rarely go much below 50% on speed. To make that scale up to using full power on a 100W machine would require rastering speeds well over 100ips.

Obviously vector-cutting wood is a different problem, but I'd expect other operations (e.g. rastering, finishing) to overwhelm any savings from a 20% bump in power.