Engravers - How would you rank them?

[Bob WrightNC]

I'm in the process of looking for an engraver for a jewelry/acrylic engraving application (laser not really an option because of the silver/gold) and am a newbie looking at this. I'd like to get your opinions on how manufacturers of engravers would rank, based on your perspective and what your experience is for making that observation. Customer service is very important to me as I'm a newbie at this and there will be a certain amount of hand holding I'm going to need just to make sure I can maximize output.


So, who do you like, top 3 and why? Who is the "John Deere, Tajima" of the rotary engraver industry - that vendor everyone gets compared to? Your opinion is important to me and will probably save me and others some legwork as we try to limit ourselves to a few vendors to really check out. I'm based in North Carolina, in the southeastern US.

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

Great forum by the way - I'm a new member here and spent about 4 hours reading posts. Great knowledge base and look forward to being a part of the community!

[Paul Phillips]

Hi Bob, welcome to the Creek, I can tell you from my own experience with using a Gravograph-New Hermes IS8000. The pros, it's got a large 24"x48" table and has had very few mechanical problems, it's been a workhorse for 8 years. The cons, when we bought the machine they were supposed to be releasing a new version of the Gravostyle software within a few months so we had a verbal agreement with the sales rep to include the upgrade at no cost upon release, of course there were many delays and by the time the new version came out almost 2 years later, the local sales branch had closed down and I never got my free upgrade. So in my experience Support was always mediocre at best and I always thought that the software was difficult to use and understand, I believe because it is developed in France and translated to English and loses some ease of use because of that. I ended up switching to another program, Flexi Engrave which is much easier to use for what I need it to do. We use it mostly for doing the braille for ADA signs and although it does an adequate job, it's slow. I would think that there has got to be a faster machine out there and I'm sure by now that there must be a standard type CNC machine with an engraving attachment that would be light years faster at drilling holes but I haven't found one yet. I'm sorry I don't know what machine to recommend to you but I'm sure someone will chime in.
Hope this helps,Good luck,
Paul

[Rodne Gold]

Best "gift" machine I ever used and saw in action was a Gravograph IS400 , had attachments to do anything and can be configured as a "volume" machine that can do big stuff. Expensive tho. I have a pal who has one and uses it all day for scratch and jewellery type engraving , he does a lot of glasses too. At the time a fully configured machine was round $40 000.... too rich for my blood .I opted to get a small Roland PNC2300 and it does small jewellery items , watches , acrylic , brass etc , cost me $2k 2nd hand. (its the same as the Roland egx 350 http://www.rolanddga.com/products/engravers/egx350/ ) works a treat and is simple to use. Drawback is the limited Z travel of about 40mm which limits you if you include the vise height . never been an issue for us as we dont use it for bulky stuff.
I see they have a 360 gift which would fit the bill admirably but it is pretty pricey too,, http://www.rolanddga.com/products/engravers/egx360/

[Bob WrightNC]

Thanks for the replies guys. I've got a line on a Gravo M40G(ift) that I can get second hand at a decent price and a used ls100 30 watt lazer that I can get a good deal on. The IS 400 is actually the machine that I'm looking at and it prices out roughly with the rotating attachment for about $17K US and some change. I don't mind paying full price since I'm new to engraving(not new in business) but I want customer service for the extra margin. I've been in sales for quite some time and you get what you pay for, I just want to make sure if I pay for it then I'm going to get it :) With that being said, I'm going to talk to Vision and Roland. The 350egx was actually the first machine that I looked at but I wasn't sure if it could handle the width of some of the trays that I wanted to engrave. Thanks and please keep the opinions coming.

[Ryan Smith2987]

The egx360 is a great machine for gold and silver jewelry and other smaller items too. It has a rotary attachment which is helpful for rings and cups as well as all sorts of other jigs. I use it for gold, sterling, pewter, titanium... pretty much any type of metal. I have even engraved an iPod with it. I started about a year ago and basically have the machine figured out without any formal training... Roland has webinars and a few youtube videos that really help move along the old learning curve. The one issue I have run into is an inconsistency with engraving glass, though that could be attributed to my lack of training. Overall, I find this machine is perfect for my needs. I can't really speak for other engravers or machines however as I have only used the 360.

[Ross Moshinsky]

Gravograph/New Hermes makes good machines but their software is very mediocre and full of bugs and their customer support is absolutely horrible. Think of the kind of customer support you get from your cable company and it's worse than that.

[Bob WrightNC]

Gravograph/New Hermes makes good machines but their software is very mediocre and full of bugs and their customer support is absolutely horrible. Think of the kind of customer support you get from your cable company and it's worse than that.

Wow, for a guy that's sitting on a good bit of their equipment, that speaks volumes - thanks Ross. Also appreciate the comments on the egx360 Ryan. Could you do platters or pitchers on that Ryan?

[Ross Moshinsky]

Wow, for a guy that's sitting on a good bit of their equipment, that speaks volumes - thanks Ross. Also appreciate the comments on the egx360 Ryan. Could you do platters or pitchers on that Ryan?

Lucky for us, we've had very few problems with the equipment so we haven't had to deal with their customer service a lot but over the last year we've dealt with them over two issues with the laser and both times were pretty horrible experiences. In the past we've called with questions about how to do various things within the software or help accomplishing a technique and they are more or less worthless.

The software in all fairness has a lot of engravers tools which are very useful but the number of bugs and cost is definitely off putting. Recently we upgraded from an older version of v5 to a newer version of v5. A memory leak issue went away which caused about 1-2 crashes a day. Only issue is now I can't rotate my engraving plate and have to do everything manually. That cost us some money the first day it happened. I also hate their dongle, which is VERY buggy. Normally with a dongle you can move it around from computer to computer without much issue (say you want to work from home over the weekend) but for whatever reason Gravograph's dongles always fight me.

If it were me, I'd look at alternatives. I don't have experience with the other companies, but someone has to be better. Stay away from dongles and crappy proprietary software if possible. I know Vectric's software works with some Gravograph machines but I don't know how much use it will be for jewelery engraving. I'm sure there are other alternatives out there. For us having who knows how many files, it's hard to even think about moving to another piece of software.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Gravograph/New Hermes makes good machines but their software is very mediocre and full of bugs and their customer support is absolutely horrible. Think of the kind of customer support you get from your cable company and it's worse than that.

Agreed. We have a New Hermes V3400 (old dinosaur) but it still works. I ABSOLUTELY HATE their software though and forget customer support. Though I do know someone who used to work for NH but is off on his own now & repairs NH machines. He's one of the few that is a really nice, supportive, helpful tech.

[Mike Null]

I've had New Hermes and their equipment is good but that all you can say positive about them. I will never buy another piece of their equipment.

I own a Newing Hall 350 which has been a very good machine, good tech support and can do virtually all engraving jobs.

[Ryan Smith2987]

Wow, for a guy that's sitting on a good bit of their equipment, that speaks volumes - thanks Ross. Also appreciate the comments on the egx360 Ryan. Could you do platters or pitchers on that Ryan?

I'm sure one could engrave platters and pitchers; however, there are certain limitations on the size. The product information guide says it can handle object up to 18" wide and those with 8" in diameter. From my experience those figures are pretty accurate. Personally, I haven't received many orders for engraving platters, but I DO engrave a ton of baby plates and the software works pretty well for those. As far as pitchers, the only round objects I have engraved are cups, rings (inside and out), wine bottles, and some bracelets. All in all, this is a good machine for me as a gift engraver, but if I was to begin bringing in larger or more exotically shaped jobs I would either try to pair the 360 with something that has a bit more flexibility for engraving larger items or try to find an engraving machine that has the same capabilities without the size restrictions.

[Bob WrightNC]

Holy cow - there seems to be an overwhelming majority here about tech support at Gravograph(gulp). This is400 was my machine of choice but I'm definitely going to look around now. I have a dongle with embroidery software and it is a hassle(pulse/tajima's software). Guys, who would you say has the best reputation in the market then if not Gravograph?

[Mark Sipes]

My Newing-Hall 350 does everything I have asked. Baby cups, jewelry, electrical plate covers, awards, etc Diamond drag or rotary., The table is 15.5 x 16 but they make bigger. 98/Xp/Vista/7 compatable.... Great Customer service. I've been to the factory in Ohio and they are knowledgable and interested in improving the product...so customer comments are taken seriously.

[Mark Ross]

We have an IS400 with a stupid dongle. Our computer died that was hooked up to it and it was running windows 95 (lol, I know...). We got a XP machine and the software installs but it would not recognize the dongle. So we contacted them. Since we had opted not to be on their mandatory yearly maintenance fee (extortion), the software upgrade would be a little over 5 grand, which ironically, when we looked into it, was the sum of all the yearly maintenance fees we refused to pay. So I ended up going to a local ham radio swap and buying a couple of ancient machines, and now I have to windows 95 boxes 1 as a spare. Total cost? Less than 250 bucks... thanks but no thanks gravograph.

The machine is a workhorse though.

As far as needing old machines to run old machines, we have a WIN98 system that is required on one machine we have, a machine that needs a computer running DOS 2.11 and...get ready for this...a machine so old, that programming is done via a custom cable hooked up to a teletype machine! If it ain't broke don't fix it I guess.

[Bob WrightNC]

Best "gift" machine I ever used and saw in action was a Gravograph IS400 , had attachments to do anything and can be configured as a "volume" machine that can do big stuff. Expensive tho. I have a pal who has one and uses it all day for scratch and jewellery type engraving , he does a lot of glasses too. At the time a fully configured machine was round $40 000.... too rich for my blood .I opted to get a small Roland PNC2300 and it does small jewellery items , watches , acrylic , brass etc , cost me $2k 2nd hand. (its the same as the Roland egx 350 http://www.rolanddga.com/products/engravers/egx350/ ) works a treat and is simple to use. Drawback is the limited Z travel of about 40mm which limits you if you include the vise height . never been an issue for us as we dont use it for bulky stuff.
I see they have a 360 gift which would fit the bill admirably but it is pretty pricey too,, http://www.rolanddga.com/products/engravers/egx360/


Update - Got pricing not quite fully configured and we're at $25K - I see what you mean Rodne. I left off all the "extras" that you had to have. :)

[Bob WrightNC]

We have an IS400 with a stupid dongle. Our computer died that was hooked up to it and it was running windows 95 (lol, I know...). We got a XP machine and the software installs but it would not recognize the dongle. So we contacted them. Since we had opted not to be on their mandatory yearly maintenance fee (extortion), the software upgrade would be a little over 5 grand, which ironically, when we looked into it, was the sum of all the yearly maintenance fees we refused to pay. So I ended up going to a local ham radio swap and buying a couple of ancient machines, and now I have to windows 95 boxes 1 as a spare. Total cost? Less than 250 bucks... thanks but no thanks gravograph.

The machine is a workhorse though.

As far as needing old machines to run old machines, we have a WIN98 system that is required on one machine we have, a machine that needs a computer running DOS 2.11 and...get ready for this...a machine so old, that programming is done via a custom cable hooked up to a teletype machine! If it ain't broke don't fix it I guess.
I've heard this about the maintenance fee from several people Mark and I just don't want to get hooked into this problem with continually having to update "at a cost". Bad business. Called another one of my gift vendors who engraves today and asked about equipment - gravograph is what they use. Somebody sold a boatload of this stuff.

[Tony Lenkic]

Bob,

Check out Vision MaxPro engraver. It may fit your needs.
There are couple more of manufacturers to checkout: UK made U-Marq and US made Xenetech

[Bob WrightNC]

Bob,

Check out Vision MaxPro engraver. It may fit your needs.
There are couple more of manufacturers to checkout: UK made U-Marq and US made Xenetech

I visited with Engraving System Solutions out of Tampa on the phone the other day about the MaxPro and I really like the sound of it. Better though, these guys at ESS seem to have their act together and know what they are talking about - problem is I don't know what I'm talking about. The way it looks now is - small graver to handle silver/gold jewelry and possibly laser to handle glass, larger items and create new products. This may be the best option. Question - I see the rotary doing bottles of wine/liquor but could/should you do that with a laser? Thanks.

[Keith Outten]

Xenetech charges for tech support after the warranty expires.
Their prices can also be tough to swallow if you need a new controller later on.
I run a Xenetech Laser Engraver at CNU that was delivered five years ago with bugs in the Corel Draw driver and they have never been fixed.

Nuff Said :(
.

[Paul Phillips]

Update: I thought it would be good to let everyone know that I was contacted by Randy Anderson who is the West coast sales rep for Gravograph and he offered to do whatever he could to make things right with me regarding the upgrade I never received and is offering the newest version of the Gravostyle software at a very reasonable price. In fairness to Randy, my bad experience was with the former sales rep who went out of business so I thinks it says a lot that he not only monitors this website but also is willing to go out of his way to offer help to a customer with an older machine, (2003). So in retrospect, I think that while Gravograph seems to have the perception of poor customer service, the local sales reps can either improve on that reputation or make it worse. Randy says he is well established since 2004 and has a large showroom and offers local support training and has quite a large number of customers. From what I can see on the web looking at the few rotary engraver manufacturers, Gravograph does seem to be the biggest and offer the most features and largest selection, there's no doubt however, after reading this thread that the experience and perception of the end users is poor support, so maybe someone at the corporate level will see this thread and take notice. Randy if you read this maybe you can pass it along up the chain.
Hope this helps.
Paul

[Mike Null]

Paul

It will be interesting to see how your issue is resolved. These people earned their lousy reputation and if you're lucky enough to have a rep who will help you--wonderful. But being from the "show me" state, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Bob WrightNC]

Paul

It will be interesting to see how your issue is resolved. These people earned their lousy reputation and if you're lucky enough to have a rep who will help you--wonderful. But being from the "show me" state, I'll believe it when I see it.

The single most important thing for me has always been customer service and that by itself almost outweighs everything else besides the price(and then if it's close it doesn't matter).

Seems like everybody wants an extended service contract or charge after the warranty goes out. The Gravograph rep that I'm dealing with seems to be a bright guy, but I've talked with two different guys at Engraving System Solutions and they are definitely top of the line - even offered to bring one up from Tampa to demo for me. These guys are sharp(highly recommended from a board member here). Plus the machine appears to be a very good machine, and it seems to be a top company based on what I've read and heard in conversations. Plus the price is right - not a ton of extra add-ons that you don't expect. Any thoughts from you guys on Engraving System Solutions or the Vision Max Pro Engraver? Thanks!

[Mike Null]

Bob

Notice I didn't say anything bad about their machines.

[Ross Moshinsky]

The single most important thing for me has always been customer service and that by itself almost outweighs everything else besides the price(and then if it's close it doesn't matter).

Seems like everybody wants an extended service contract or charge after the warranty goes out. The Gravograph rep that I'm dealing with seems to be a bright guy, but I've talked with two different guys at Engraving System Solutions and they are definitely top of the line - even offered to bring one up from Tampa to demo for me. These guys are sharp(highly recommended from a board member here). Plus the machine appears to be a very good machine, and it seems to be a top company based on what I've read and heard in conversations. Plus the price is right - not a ton of extra add-ons that you don't expect. Any thoughts from you guys on Engraving System Solutions or the Vision Max Pro Engraver? Thanks!

I wouldn't base my business on a sales rep ever. What happens when you call up the corporate office. That's what you should base your decision on. Sales reps come and go. The standard of customer service at the corporate office is what is most important. I can tell you Gravograph's customer service is one of the worst in the industry.

[Bob WrightNC]

I wouldn't base my business on a sales rep ever. What happens when you call up the corporate office. That's what you should base your decision on. Sales reps come and go. The standard of customer service at the corporate office is what is most important. I can tell you Gravograph's customer service is one of the worst in the industry.

Absolutely Ross. I guess my comment about the Vision reps was more about the distributorship ESS than about the individual rep(although the rep I talked with yesterday had been there 20 plus years). His comment to me was call us first on customer service, then call the corporate office after our normal operating hours(the corporate office is in Arizona). Again, the strongest recommendation about this group came from a gentleman who sells a competing product but not in my area and he strongly recommended this group/distributor for Vision as one of the best in the country, regardless of brand.

Of course nobody is perfect but when a competitor gives them such a strong recommendation that means something.

[Scott Shepherd]

I don't think I've ever heard anything bad about any of the rotary engraving machines. Roland, Xenetech, Gravograph, Vision, Quest, all of them are well built from what I can tell, and all of them do the jobs you need, again, from what I can tell.

To me, it really does come down to service and support. I can think of 2 on that list that have had a lot of complaints from actual customers. Most all of the complaints are based around either having to pay to get help or from getting ignored or left behind on issues.

The problem I have with paying ANYONE for support is who's at fault. In our case, we have a machine that had bugs in the software. You would be engraving for 30 minutes, then, out of the blue, it machine would cut down into the work and drag right across the work, ruining it. Tech support said it was a bug in the software and they we're working on correcting it. So I had to pay you to tell me that your software has a bug in it and that you're not going to fix it? To be honest, that's exactly the attitude of some companies and it's exactly the reason we'll never own a new one of their machines.

If you're product is bulletproof, and I have a problem, I can understand, to some degree, having to pay you for help, but when your product has problems and then you charge me to tell me that your product has problems, then I have a problem myself.

[Rodne Gold]

I would go for Newing Hall ... if I could have afforded one ... they were a LOT more than the iso over here.
I have only seen em used in factories/industrial sites over here in SA but doing all sorts of difficult engraving like die sinking and cavity engraving incredibly small stuff with ease.
All the owners and operators swore blind by them.

[Ruben Salcedo]

Bob,

I think you're in a win, win situation here, the Max Pro is a great machine, and having great reps in your area, plus I can say that Vision are great at support without looking to reap you up. I have a Vision Max Pro that I bough used and I'm still learning how to use it, originally came with the Vision Pro 7 (software) I upgrade to version 8 and only cost me $300.00 (8 was the highest version now version 9 is out), when I decide to installed it (connected) I ran in to some connection and communication problems, I call Vision and was helped to a point where the problem become risky to do it my self, according with the rep at Vision, this was after after several calls, 3 or 4 for free... now I had to sign a contract service which would cost me $75.00 for one instance or $199.00 for a year of unlimited support which I think is a great deal, the risky problem to fix was actually a firmware update that needed do to a newer software I was trying to run, at the end I end up doing it my self which actually was very easy to do, it was just risky, if I had done it wrong I would had render the controller useless, this is something that Vision totally don't recommend anyone with no experience to do it, I decide to do it my self after I got a few tips off record from the rep. With this experience I can say that I'm very happy with they service and support. (another win here)

Good luck.

Ruben

[Hilton Lister]

We have a Vision Max. (older model than the Pro). Overall it has proved very reliable. I'm not happy with the software Vision Pro, (EngraveLab) as it occasionally does some strange things. I understand that the latest controller can run directly from Coreldraw and, to me, that would be a great advantage.
However, I have to admit that most problems arise from the operator not following correct procedure!