60 or 80 watt?

[Bryce Mccloud]

Hi there everyone - love the board lots of good info in here - I'm hoping you can spare a minute to offer your opinions
I'm thinking about a new laser and I could use some advice!

I mostly do 3 things with my laser engraver now - Epilog helix 30watt

1. I engrave wood blocks to the deepest depth I can in one pass to print from as plates on my letterpress (which needs high relief blocks)

2. I cut a lot of 1/8 birch plywood for packaging and art pieces

3. cut intricate paper designs for myself and clients


I'm wondering what kind of speed I'll gain from a 60 watt machine or an 80 watt? the 30 watt will handle both but not quickly
considering trotec which seem to be fast! how much power do you need to take advantage of that speed?

thanks for your help

Bryce

[Lucy Lee]

Hi Bryce,
if for cutting 1/8 plywood ,80w will be better than 60w one

Best Regards


Hi there everyone - love the board lots of good info in here - I'm hoping you can spare a minute to offer your opinions
I'm thinking about a new laser and I could use some advice!

I mostly do 3 things with my laser engraver now - Epilog helix 30watt

1. I engrave wood blocks to the deepest depth I can in one pass to print from as plates on my letterpress (which needs high relief blocks)

2. I cut a lot of 1/8 birch plywood for packaging and art pieces

3. cut intricate paper designs for myself and clients


I'm wondering what kind of speed I'll gain from a 60 watt machine or an 80 watt? the 30 watt will handle both but not quickly
considering trotec which seem to be fast! how much power do you need to take advantage of that speed?

thanks for your help

Bryce

[Mike Null]

If you really want to take advantage of the Trotec raster speed get an 80 watt machine. Mine is a 45 watt and while it's fast I can't run it at 100% speed on certain jobs such as rastering wood.

[George M. Perzel]

Bryce;
As is true of many things.....
BIGGER IS BETTER!!
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[Bryce Mccloud]

thanks everyone for your responses

I figured more is better - but glad to hear from real world experiences - sometimes the difference between to things isn't enough to justify the extra cost. But I want to take advantage of the speed if I can!

Rastering wood at as close to 100 speed would be a boon to my workflow.
our ideal depth of cut would be about 1/16th of an inch to match our plates made by other methods - we can't match that depth with our machine currently in a timely way and get by with shallower plates. Anything closer to that goal will help for sure plus speed in vectoring thicker materials

[Scott Shepherd]

Even at 80W, I don't think you'll get 1/16" deep rastering at 100% speed.

[Keith Outten]

I'm pretty sure that Scott is correct, you probably can't raster engrave in one pass with an 80 watt laser to a depth of 1/16" with a Trotec Laser. The Trotec lasers are so fast it would take much more power. The Speedy 300 will do 150 ips with a 5G acceleration and that is moving right along.

However I do have some real world metrics that might help put some things into perspective. The following data is an average based on laser engraving thousands of Corian sign blanks:

Epilog 35 watt = 24 minutes
Xenetech 60 watt = 12 minutes
Trotec 75 watt = 5 minutes
Trotec 80 watt = 4 minutes

Note the Trotec brings not only more power to the table but a much faster engraving speed. Although you have to slow the machine down to get the depth you need for most jobs there is still a major time savings based on the acceleration rate. Both Scott and I have seen the same results in performance.
.

[Bryce Mccloud]

Arrgh the computer just ate my response! - I'll try again

thanks for the real world advice

I know that it might not do everything I hope for but anything quicker will be worth the extra investment as this machine has really changed how I work. And hopefully the speed will allow me to do multiple passes if I really need that depth for the same time the low relief stamps I make now.

It's funny

Last year I was happy that the laser took any of the load off me hand cutting my work. If it took all day for one block I didn't care - but these days it find it has allowed us so much freedom that I have things lined up to cut and we are waiting for the machine to finish. It was such a huge leap for us to take at the shop but it has really paid off... as well as opening up a whole exciting new world of possibilities of things we can make!

I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about the process - has anyone written a book about the subject? It'd be great to hit the highlights and see what else people are doing out there.

I know there is a lot of good info on the site as well - plan to do some more reading here for sure

best
Bryce

[Ross Moshinsky]

Based on what you want and the cost difference, an 80W Trotec Speedy 300 should probably top your list. It won't be easy on the wallet though.

If you were just cutting, I'd say buy a 100+W Chinese machine. You'll have an extra $15,000 in your pocket and you'll be able to produce work at a similar rate as a Trotec Speedy 80W. The raster engraving is where the Trotec is just superior.

There is one other alternative but you need the floor space to do it. You could buy two Chinese machines that are 90W each. 24x36 bed or even maybe a 36x48 bed. Probably around $10,000-12,000. With both machines producing, there is a good chance you'll come close to matching the Trotec's production or beating it possibly (depends on how much engraving you're doing).

[George M. Perzel]

Ross;
You don't need more floor space-get a dual head-dual 100 watt Shenhui (or others). Double production but must be same job.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[Bryce Mccloud]

thanks again for all the helpful info - we are working on our plan right now!