Which Chinese Laser To Buy ???

[Phill Barnes]

Hi Guys
This is my first post on this site so I have to say Hi to all from Queensland Australia.
I have been a self employed Sign Maker for many years now. When I started my business, I purchased a GCC Mercury 25 watt with all the options. I loved this machine but at the time when the word laser was mentioned to prospective customers, the word RADIATION would pop up and they would run a mile. Other than that, they could not see my vision of how unique a product I could make them with my machine to give something that no one else stocked. I am mainly referring to the Scrapbook market but not only. Needless to say, I was getting no work for my laser apart from a few acrylic jobs. I was designing bits and pieces as samples but at the end of the day, I had a $32000 shop decoration. So I sold it on for a massive loss of coarse and then all those who ran scared said, "Hey Phill, about that laser. I would like.....". This was when lasered scapbook parts started to flood through the scapbook world. Now with a new marketing vision, I want to purchase a nother laser and have been searching the Chinese market via the internet. I like the Bodor and Golden Laser machines for their specs. I realise that most of these machines use generic hardware so they should be the same ish but some advertise better specs than other. I want a good machine but I want it cheap also.
I will need
80-100 watt
600x900 mm or 1200x900 mm cutting area
electric rise and fall with vector honeycomb table
and will most likely choose a host of other little options like auto focus, red dot, rotary unit, etc.

Who can recommend a particular company to deal with and also any companies not to deal with. I started to like York laser and SignTech products, but then I started hearing bad things about service once paid and poor reliability.

I would be greatfull to hear of anyones experiences with these companies and thank you all in advance.

Phill Barnes
CCE

[matthew knott]

Shenui seems to be favourite on here, lots of posts on here about them! Havent brought myself but it's who I would look at first! Rodne is your man, look he's excellent posts out, he took the time to fly out and cheek the company out and report all he's findings! Look at the top thread on shenui Chinese lasers! Sure others on here will be along with better knowledge than me but It's a start!

[Bruce Boone]

I am still waiting on a quote from Golden Laser for a very powerful 650 watt YAG laser in a setup much like the one you are looking at. It's been about a week now. I am very interested due to their specs on a machine that I'm having a very hard time sourcing elsewhere. It seems to be very rare to get high power, rotary axis capability, and an XY travel of more than 8" x 8" for less than low to mid six digits from other potential suppliers. One thing that concerns me is that the laser is spec'ed for 380 volts, whereas I only have 220 volts single or 3 phase, so I need to find out if the machine has a transformer that can be retapped or how that would work.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone that has bought from them also.

[Nick Foley]

Even if the machine can't be rewired, and they can't provide a transformer with it... you should be able to score the appropriate transformer used and locally for $100-300. Setting up a robot recently, we got the appropriate 220 to 480 15KVA transformer for about $150 at a nearby industrial supply yard.

[Bruce Boone]

I figured that might be the case, but I didn't know if that's how it's normally done. My Mazak CNC lathe has different voltage taps on an internal transformer, so that makes it easy for them. I also don't know what if any the difference in the 50 and 60 Hertz frequencies would make. Looking at getting a Chinese laser is definitely out of my comfort zone, but they both look to produce some good stuff. It's a matter of assembling parts made by others into an intelligent system. I imagine there will be some major learning curve with foreign written software, but what new system wouldn't have that? I had a US company quote a custom laser and some of the extras seemed to really be overpriced: $950 for a limit switch, $9500 for a vision system, adding a full 4th axis control at about $20K, when it could simply use a 3rd axis like on a Universal laser and sense whether the rotary is plugged in or not. I'm sure the parts are quality stuff, but you start to feel a bit taken when all that stuff adds up so high. The real kicker was the table travel. In the US made setup I had quoted, they used XY stages instead of a gantry setup and only had an 8" travel. If I'm going to be paying that much for a laser, I would want a bit more flexibility than that. Any variation from their normal setup would get extremely costly, effectively removing them from contention.

[Phill Barnes]

Does anyone have any experience with the Bodor BCL-690N 80 watt reci laser cutter. So far their prices are seem to be pretty low $3670 CIF to Brisbane Australia with red dot, honeycomb + $1000 for electric up and down with auto focus probe, rotary device, 3 x extra mirrors, 1 x extra focus lens an cw5000 cooling system.
Anyone have better quotes than this?

Phill

[Rodne Gold]

it really doesn't matter much what make you buy , most use the same components , it's how they put it together that counts.
In China ,you get what you pay for , if an item is 5 dollah and you get the same item for 3 dollah , you got to know that there were some compromises.
Your price with the extra's is in line with most other lasers in that size/power config , you will need more spares as well and don't be fooled by the shipping , do NOT use their shippers , appoint a shipper/forwarder in aussie to handle it , add at LEAST $500-700 on the price for shipping door to door.
Your biggest angst will come from paying up front to a co you don't know from a bar of soap while they "build" your laser.. I had no such worries as I used a co I have been to etc.

[Phill Barnes]

Thanks Rodne
I have sent an email to Shenhui requesting some prices but have heard nothing back as yet but I will give them a couple more days before I follow them up. I will also do some digging into Bodor's history and check out some shipping alternatives.
I do everything in Corel Draw and am hoping that these chinese machines with Lasercut 5.3 work as easy as they say they do from Corel. I found the GCC print driver a breeze to learn. How would you compare these systems?

Phill

[Bruce Boone]

I think I have made a change in my decision making making on my burning laser. After getting responses that were out to lunch from the two Chinese companies, and not having a very good comfort factor about ordering something so expensive from overseas that's designed for a different power supply and all the potential shipping issues, I think I will build it myself here. I will either use my Tormach Milll, which is a great machine, but is currently not being used as I also have a full sized machining center, or make a new machine from scratch based on the Sherline 4th axis table top mill. I will have the president of Micro Kinetics over tomorrow to discuss the options. I could possibly even put a Mikro Kinetics mill inside my current laser cabinet and use the YAG laser's existing 4th axis and exhaust system. I would buy the raw 400 watt fiber laser unit from SPI and do the "stuff" to make it a rotary or XY cutting system. It would save around $100K in the process over an engineered solution from the US and if I used the Tormach, I would have better travel and have all the working axes already. It would just require the addition of a full enclosure to keep the beam from being able to get out. I have read where people can use the Mach 3 control to run a laser. The laser people also said that with frequency modulation, I would be able to do either full burns or engraving, which would be ideal. There would be little need to share a cabinet with the YAG laser if that were the case. It would be good to use the same rotary axis if only one laser could burn and only the other could deep engrave, but if the new laser could do both, I would also get the advantage of being able to do XY flat work up to around 20" x 10" or so if it used the Tormach CNC frame. I've been agonizing over this decision for years, and I finally have a solution that might workable.

[Rodne Gold]

Bruce , I saw the 650W yag systems in operation , mostly used in flat plate machining centre type applications where the head was static and the plate moved , I saw one cutting thru 8mm steel at Shenui , didnt look like it was fine enough for the delicate work you do tho ? but maybe that was the motion system?
Pricing for a system was around US$ 50k as far as I remember. I will check at work , I think I got a quote at one time from Frank Mu at Golden laser..not on my home machine.

Phil
The GCC driver is wonderful , the RDcam/laserworks/lasercut driver is actually a lot more potent in terms of what you can do re positioning and controlling the cut/engraving but is nowhere near as good with its Corel interface , it basically exports the Corel drawing out to the laser driver as an Ai/Plt/whatever file , the issue is that the GCC driver is a what you see is what you get type thing and the others do sometimes require workarounds to get the same WYSIWYG results. Nothing to be scared of and a small "price" to pay. My relatively unskilled lowish level staff have no problems running/programming my Gcc's and my chinese machines.
I would suggest getting hold of Shenui via skype , try get hold of Blanca Yan her skype name is blanca610616. You can mail her at yanblanca@yahoo.com

[Bruce Boone]

Golden Laser did spec out a machine much closer to what I was looking for tonight. They had originally showed a movie of one with about a 15 foot table and a huge rotary axis that looked like a large lathe standing outside the laser table. It was cutting about an 8 foot long pipe. Way overkill for what I'm looking for. They have an enclosed 400 x 600 model with a 650 watt YAG available. I think the cut on something thin, like 2mm would be fine and get quite messy as the thickness goes up. I wouldn't mind being able to cut my tension set rings on it. These are the type that stick up to hold a stone. They can get around 5mm tall or so at that point. I don't know if their YAGs can be pulsed to do some engraving as well as cutting. That seems to be one advantage of the fiber is the fine beam kerf (10um to 50um) and the fact that it could be pulsed. That's assuming I can get the Mach 3 control to do that. A disadvantage of the fiber is that it would use g-code rather than a cad file, so won't be as easy to run new designs. It's not a huge difference though, in that I'm sure the Chinese software would have some serious learning curve as well.I did ask for a quote on the latest offering from Golden Laser. If its still around $50k, it would be worth persuing. The other fiber laser alone is about $80k, and I would need to add a cutting head, and convert my machine over, with air solenoids, interlocks, full enclosure and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. It has the advantage of having laser experts in this country that have actually done test cuts for me, so I know for certain the laser itself can do a nice cut on 2mm thick rings. The trick would be running it without having the $350k machine they ran it on.

[matthew knott]

Im NOT recommending this but might be of interest
http://www.ebay.com/itm/B26173-ELECTROX-SCORPION-LASER-MARKING-MACHINE-/360431803570?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53eb68dcb2
Its been for sale forever and has quite a few interesting parts "aerotech xy stages" and a 500watt yag laser. Just the interlocked enclosure would have cost a fortune back in the day, you would need to add a cutting nozzel and lens and who knows if the laser works as surport for it is going to be patchy at best but at 19k its cheap, that would have been a 300k plus system new and i bet they would take a offer on it. BIG BIG gamble with a risk of getting 19k's worth of scrap but i do know people that worked on them (still in the states) so it might be posible to get it running again. More food for thought Bruce than anything

[Bruce Boone]

Wow. Thanks Matthew. I will definitely give that some thought. Having someone nearby who really understands the ins and outs of motion control really helps me feel better about such a prospect. Those darn stages alone are probably about that new. They are accurate to millionths of an inch or some such thing.

[matthew knott]

Think they would be more than that, shame it hasnt got the rotary or powerd z but it can easily be added. The main problem is getting the laser going (and keeping) they where pretty relaible in the feild but getting power supplies (if it goes bang) is almost imposible, electrox dont really make or surport it anymore but they do have some spares still. I know a the guy that designed the cutting head and he does the odd private job so that would not be an issue, But as i say its a BIG gamble, Cavet emptor as they say in Rome.


Wow. Thanks Matthew. I will definitely give that some thought. Having someone nearby who really understands the ins and outs of motion control really helps me feel better about such a prospect. Those darn stages alone are probably about that new. They are accurate to millionths of an inch or some such thing.

[Bruce Boone]

I just got a quote from Golden Laser at $34,500 plus $800 for the rotary. That's fairly awesome. Darn, just when I thought things would be more simple, I have a few good options I need to sort through. They would have a fully engineered solution that should work right out of the box. It is YAG technology, so will need a flash lamp backup and other spare parts, but it looks like they have a good machine. This machine does have cutting head auto sensing, which is a fairly big deal that the fiber laser wouldn't have. That would allow the cutter to follow strange shapes, like following a square tube as it's rotated, or a tension set ring that has a hump on one side.

In looking further into the used machine that Matthew found, I would likely gamble on that if I had more room and more power available. I'm pretty tight on space and can't do unlimited power. The chiller looks like it would be very power hungry, and they don't really give good specs on that stuff. It's also 12 years old and not being used to make money now. You wonder why that is. One plus for the fiber system is that there's no additional footprint; it is in a machine that I have sitting on the floor already. It's drawback is having to create a system that all works together. A plus for the YAG is the large 400 x 600mm table travel and the pre engineered unit that should work already.

This is hard to do!

[matthew knott]

Whats the power spec on the golden laser? Anything with flash lamps is going to draw lots of juice and need a big chiller as your lucky to get 5% wall socket efficency, hopefully it would come with a chiller but worth checking. Price is very good IMHO ! Guess getting them to cut some rings would be the next step. I doubt this will be anygood for engraving mind you, just cutting, but again samples would prove it either way.

[Bruce Boone]

I don't see the total power needed. It does come with a chiller. Here is the basic laser: http://goldenlaser.cc/Product/Kxl_629_23.html They sent a movie of it cutting through a round a 3/4" diameter tube, which is very close to what I'm looking for.

[matthew knott]

Yeah hard to work out anything from the spec sheet, few errors in it I suspect. 18kw chiller is quite big (it will need it) you would need to vent that heat outside in the summer but nice in the winter, we have a 15kw and it heats our whole building easily. Its going to pull a fair bit from the wall socket so i would get that confirmed and check your electrics are up to the job. Wheres the video, cant see it on the website? If it does the job i cant see you getting anything like that cheaper.

[Bruce Boone]

They emailed me the video. I imagine it's too large to upload here at 4.2 meg.

[Bruce Boone]

After getting the great quote from Golden Laser, I'm finding that it can only be run in continuous mode due to its flash lamp configuration. This would eliminate the possibility of doing any engraving, which would be important to my products standing out from others. It seems the only way to do that is to go with a fiber laser where the frequency and waveform can be specified. I am having them check into whether their unit could be supplied that way. I talked to their US distributor in Atlanta today, and he basically said the same thing. It would probably skyrocket the cost into the 6 digit range.

I also talked to the guy from Micro Kinetics today and had him look at my Tormach machine. One possibility we came up with is taking out the Mach 3 motion control board and substituting it with his own, which would have about 4 times the resolution, and he would be able to better integrate the machine with his software. That would be relatively cheap to do. All the electrical and mechanical guts would remain the same with the exception of trading out the rotary axis with a smaller and better suited one for laser work. I also got a firm quote on the 400 watt TruFiber lasing unit from Trumpf in the $73k range with chiller and frequency generator and stuff. This has no motion control as part of the package. The fiber may not be able to get through the thicker 4mm material as I had hoped, but would have the advantages of extreme efficiency and long life. The laser part would also be a fairly low risk option since it all works as a unit and if retrofitting the Tormach didn't work, it could be run on a unit like the EBay unit that Matthew had found.

Another somewhat strange but maybe cost effective option is to get a Chinese laser with both a burning and engraving source in one unit with a dual optical path. I could have the power of the 650 watt flashlamp YAG and engrave with a 100 watt diode pumped YAG. Not a bad solution either.

[Phill Barnes]

Hi Guys and thanks for your input so far. I have decided to buy a G. Weike LC1290 90-100 watt reci w2 laser. Their price was USD $3900 + $300 rotary + $150 auto focus + $400 cw500 chiller + $100 usb + $100 red dot = $4950 delivered CIF to Brisbane Australia. I will probably use my own freight forwarder to help deal with customs so hopefully their price should reduce a bit. As our customs regulations read, if it is a computerised laser machine or if what you are buying is not commercially manufactured in Australia, then it is duty free. Please don't stop posting on this thread as I would still like to hear your opinions and see you pics and videos.

Phill

[Bruce Dorworth]

Phil, what do you plan to use the laser for? The reason I ask is that I ordered the same laser last Thursday. I had an 80 watt machine that I sold to my daughter a month ago. With my old laser I did several pictures on Marble, Acrylic and wood. I also cut a lot of 1/8" birch and 1/8" mdf. I figured the LC1290 would be great replacement.

Then while looking at G.Weike's web page I noticed that they call the LC1290 a cutting machine and the LG1200 is an engraving machine. Well the LG1200 only goes up to 60watt and they don't make a 60 watt RECI tube. For right now I have changed my order to the LG1200 machine.

Like I said I am still on the fence as to which way to go. I was told that the 60 watt laser has a smaller dot. I was happy with the engraving I did with my 80 watt machine.

If anyone has any thoughts on this I would sure appreciate your input.

Bruce

[Rodne Gold]

buy the 60w tube AND order an 80/100w Reci + power supply (should be $600 or so)
You can fit the other tubes in and easily configure the machine to use em. you can then decide what to use and have a spare.

[Bruce Dorworth]

Rodney, you are the man! That must be why you have that grin on your face in the photo. My only question would be the diameter of the two tubes. I have heard that the RECI tubes are bigger around. I guess I could have the RECI tubes installed and the make spacers for the regular tubes.

I am still open to other thoughts.

Bruce

[Phill Barnes]

Hi Bruce
It is funny that you should mention the difference between the LC and the LG as I asked the same questions to Melody at G. Weike last night and got a reply tonight.
This is what she said quoting the W2 90 watt tube which peaks at 110 watt,

I suggest you choose LG for both engraving and cutting.
If you use a LC machine for engraving, the engraving precision will not be so good, especially when you want high demand as photoengrav.

If you use LGseres for cutting.only influence the cutting max thickness a little.For speed, almost the same. But W2 tube is already very powerful.. It should have the ability to cut acrylic 15mm and wood 7-8mm.

These are some of the questions and answers that I first asked her last night.
1. What is the difference between LG1200 and LC1290 except for tube size?

LG= laser engraving LC=laser cutting.

The difference of them are mainly laser tube and laser powersupply. And a little machine function difference. For example the gear of the belt and so on.

Usually if you want the machine both for engraving and cutting, we will set up a LG machine for you. And if you need the machine only for cutting expecially thick material, we will set up LC machine.


2.Is the Reci tube you have quoted actually an 80 watt or 100 watt.

Reci has improves their tubes this year. W2 tube is 90W peak power 110W.


3. What is the prices for larger Reci tubes

For the tubes, not the larger tube the better. Large laser tubes are not suitable for engraving any more. If you want to do bothe engraving and cutting. W2 is your best choice. If you focus on cutting, i will quote you larger Reci tube price later. I will suggest you the suitable laser but not expensive laser.

I would like to visit the factory myself to see the difference in the machines performance side by side. We will see if that pans out. As I understand the info, any size tube can be put into these machines and I think that they use the same chasis. I will be getting some photos from her in a day or so, so I will find out then and post them. I also plan to be cutting a lot of 1/8n ply and also 3/32 box board for scrapbooking which is very dense hence the reason that I want a lot of power. I was even considering upto 150 watt but as you can see from her replies, she recommends no more than the reci 90 watt for engraving. That gives me an idea, 2 machines !!

Regards
Phill

[Bruce Boone]

Yeah hard to work out anything from the spec sheet, few errors in it I suspect. 18kw chiller is quite big (it will need it) you would need to vent that heat outside in the summer but nice in the winter, we have a 15kw and it heats our whole building easily. Its going to pull a fair bit from the wall socket so i would get that confirmed and check your electrics are up to the job. Wheres the video, cant see it on the website? If it does the job i cant see you getting anything like that cheaper.

Thanks for the heads up on the power consumption Matthew. I finally saw in the fine print of a quote that the power consumption on the 650 watt YAG laser is under 30kW. At 220 volts, that's 135 amps! That is a complete and utter show stopper for that route. The 400 watt fiber laser pulls 9 amps! I knew there would be a difference, but I wasn't expecting that.

The more I research this, the more I find that cutting lasers and engraving lasers are completely different animals. The engraver ablates the material away, which is done by pulsing the beam and using a Q switch to build up more peak energy, like several kilowatts, even though average power is much less, like 50 or 80 watts. They often use laser diodes to exite the YAG or fiber medium. Cutting lasers generally use flash lamps, partly because they are cheap and have always worked well, but they tend to be run in continuous mode. You don't really see high powered lasers fired by diodes. Maybe it would just take a lot of them and it would add complexity over a flash lamp. I'm not really sure why else. I suppose a flash lamp provides a whole lot of light energy in a simple package. No need to make things more complex than they need to be.

I might have to rethink my original goals to only cutting thin rings, but cutting them well. The beam gets down to .0002", so it's a lot finer than other options. It probably won't be able to cut much past a 3mm thickness. It may or may not engrave well, but worst case, I could do that first on my other laser then add a mark for zeroing the cutting laser and cut the ring out in a second operation.

I feel like I'm riding a rollercoaster. Every time I think I have something figured out, a new hill comes along to throw me off balance. I'm having new trials done at the fiber laser place to address some of the issues. They also have pulsed laser options to throw into the mix, so we'll see when the next hill or corner occurs.