What materials can you actually take advantage of the full speed trotec lasers offer?

[Ben Dalton]

Our company is about to pull the trigger on a new laser machine and I have one more question for the forum. While the Epilog and GCC machines tout about the same max head speed (about 80 ips), the trotec machines can go an incredible 140 ips... I have about 10 yrs experience working with lasers, so I know the material you're using, the max watts your machine outputs, along with max head speed all effect how fast the head can actually travel and still give good results. My company started as a monument company that has expanded to do all sorts of engraving including on granite, wood, coated and anodized metals, acrylics, and plastics. So my question is assuming I will buy an 80 watt laser from either Epilog, GCC or Trotec, what materials can actually be rastered at trotec's 140 ips and still turn out good results? Although we do all the aforementioned materials, granite and wood are our two biggest selling materials (rastering pictures and photos), so those materials matter the most to us. I want to know if spending the extra money for the trotec machine will be worth it as far as output time is concerned, or if we'd just be turning down the speed closer to the other brands to get the same results. Any help answering these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to all.

[Rodne Gold]

You need to send each company a file , specifiying DPI etc and then get the time it takes to do this with apples being apples - ie the same settings on each machine.. if you are concerned with thruput then select the fastest.. bearing in mind that quality is also an issue. What you can do will depend on wattage , 25w at 100% power and 100% speed might not mark the way you want , 75w might.
So to really say what can be done at full speed , you have to know how the material will react at the power level and speed you want to go.
For my company , thruput is doubled and tripled easily , I just buy another laser and so on , also have built in redundancy ..so maybe for you , it might be worth it to get 2 cheaper and slower lasers than one high speed one...
Granite and wood are materials that dont require extremely high resolution engraving..they cannot hold that resolution..so as another suggestion to you to improve thruput - try engraving at much lower dpi and see where the best compromise is , you might find the stuff acceptable at 200 dpi where before you were using 300 ...this will cut times to 2/3rds.
At any rate , I can't see you making a mistake buying a Trotec -- they enjoy a great reputation here and owners seem very happy with theirs.

[Mike Null]

I doubt that Trotec will be more expensive. I don't do the materials you've mentioned but I believe 80 watts will permit full speed operation on the Trotec for those materials.

Years ago when I bought my machine Epilog was cheaper but Universal was more expensive.

[Scott Shepherd]

There is no quality loss at 100% speed. I've talked to a number of people that believe you have to slow a machine down to get the ultimate in quality. On our Trotec, that's not the case. I can raster 4 or 5 point fonts at 100% speed and get every "i" dotted. If you do have quality loss at 100% speed, then your machine needs to be adjusted (in the settings).

We run a lot of things at 100% speed. Probably not wood because you won't get the depth or the darkness if you are flying through it, but engraving plastics, anodized metals, etc. are no problem. I recently did an anodized aluminum job with 4 point fonts at 100% speed. It was razor sharp. I wouldn't worry about the quality, it's there in that machine.

[Dan Hintz]

I think others may be reading your post wrong (or I am... not sure which). They seem to be under the impression that you're wondering about quality of every machine's output at 100% speed. It sounds to me like you just care if you have to slow the speed down on the fast machines (i.e., Trotec) because the tube power level is not high enough to take advantage of it.

I'll answer it this way... other than engraving with Cermark and cutting operations, I ran pretty much everything with 100% speed on my 60W ULS. Anodized aluminum and glass is in the 20% power range. That means if I move to a machine twice as fast, I would still be running at only 40% of my max power... I want a much faster machine, so the Trotec would be juuuuust fine running at 100% speed for those substrates, particularly if you got an 80W tube. Shallow engraving on many plastics is still way below 100% power, so jumping up to an 80W cartridge and keeping your speed at 100% on the faster machine is still likely to get you a quality engraving (just faster).

Deep engraving could be another matter, depending upon how deep you engrave. I may go to 100P/50S for a deep wood engrave, so the extra speed in that case will be wasted... but it's there if you need it.

[Mike Null]

I amend my remarks to agree with Dan and Steve about the speed engraving wood. Depending on the depth you're after you may have to use full power and slow the Trotec down to what ever speed that will achieve the depth you want. You should be able to engrave plastic at 100% speed at 80 watts.

[Scott Shepherd]

I've seen a lot of posts on here saying that the speed isn't that important when selecting a laser. We recently did a job that was over 25,000 pieces, all vector cutting. I set it up on the Trotec and on the Universal. I optimized both vector paths using each manufacturers own tools. It was cutting at very low power, so the wattage had nothing to do with it, but the Trotec was almost half the time of the Universal. each part had 5 features and I ran 60 at a time, so it was a lot of moving from place to place.

If I had to do the 25,000+ on the Universal, it would have taken us a week longer to run the same job. To me, that's value. THAT'S why we own a Trotec. A week less time puts a lot more money in our pocket, rather than burning it up in labor costs, not to mention, we wouldn't have met the tight deadline.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Just a thought Ben, how big are the items you engrave?

As to the original question, I'm reading it the same way as Dan & Steve, engraving is a product of power / "contact" time, the more available power you have the faster the machine "can" be run for the same output. The limited amount of engraving I do on the gantry machines is usually in the 12% to 15% power range on an 80 watt source,if the machine would run faster I could simply up the power to get the same results.

best wishes

Dave

[Rodne Gold]

If you were using the same power on the 2 machines , your cutting time should have been identical - the only difference could be moving from one piece to another or the path the machine takes to cut etc..

[Scott Shepherd]

If you were using the same power on the 2 machines , your cutting time should have been identical - the only difference could be moving from one piece to another or the path the machine takes to cut etc..

That's my point Rodney, the Trotec moves from point to point so fast, it makes that much of a difference in run times on certain types of jobs.

[Ben Dalton]

Actually, I'm getting insight from both ways people are looking at the question... I am a stickler for quality, especially on our granite photographs, but granite doesn't need to be high power, where as wood does need to be higher power (for a darker burn). So I know material matters when you're talking speed. My main concern is if I would be able to run at a full (or close to) 140 ips on a trotec (especially with granite engraving) or if to get the same quality, I would end up turning down the speed closer to what a GCC or Epilog run at (80 ips). Right now we do all sorts of sized products from small plastic tags and 3"x4" laser granite photos, to headstones that can potentially cover the entire engraving area. We also do granite tile murals that sometimes end up being 5'x5' or bigger. One of the reasons we are upgrading is our current GCC explorer can only do 3 full foot tiles at once, where as if we get a speedy 400 or a GCC spirit GLS we'll be able to run 6 full foot tiles at once. On a job as big as that, getting 140 ips could mean a lot compared to 80 ips. I have current prices on both machines, and with comparable specs the trotec is coming in about $5000 more than the GCC (the GCC dealer is running a special right now). We are also looking into getting more into the vector cutting end of things where as Scott pointed out, the Trotec looks superior if you have a lot of pieces you're cutting and it's moving around a lot. We also have a china produced AP brand laser which has been great for us so far for our big products (it has a working area of 48x36) but the smaller machines can put out tiles so much faster, we almost have to have a faster western machine. Right now, our tile engraving makes up a huge chunk of our profit, so granite tiles are the most important material even though we still would like to do more wood engraving--which is why we're upgrading from 40 watt to 80 watt to be able to pick up the pace. If we can pick up the pace in this area, we'll be able to lower our prices on the wood products and hopefully sell more. Thanks to all for the insights, we really appreciate it and it is helping us make our decision.

[Scott Shepherd]

Ben, you'll have zero issues rastering granite at 100% speed and not losing anything on the Trotec.

[Keith Outten]

It's easy to forget that the Trotec Speedy lasers have a 5G acceleration which is a big part of the reason they are so fast. The travel speed of 150 ips is quick but the acceleration factor is what Steve and I missed originally when we were trying to find out why our machines were so much faster then other machines with similar laser specifications.
.

[Rodne Gold]

The spirits are significantly faster than the Explorers BTW .. actual throughput is around 1.5 and up to 2x higher on some jobs

As I said take the files to the various dealers and compare throughput and quality while making sure you are comparing apples with apples - these lasers are the price of cars..you wouldn't buy a car without taking it for a test drive....

[Scott Shepherd]

The spirits are significantly faster than the Explorers BTW .. actual throughput is around 1.5 and up to 2x higher on some jobs

As I said take the files to the various dealers and compare throughput and quality while making sure you are comparing apples with apples - these lasers are the price of cars..you wouldn't buy a car without taking it for a test drive....

I agree, but I'd also caution that most dealers don't know how to run their machines. Someone here on the forum not too long ago posted some times they got from the dealers. I didn't think the numbers looked right, he sent me the files and I ran them and came up with very different numbers. It showed the Universal was as fast as the Trotec. I asked about it, was told that the new universal's had upgraded, faster motors now, than the ones on my machine. I had the head of their tech support on the phone last week and asked him if I could upgrade our machine to the faster motors. He said he had no idea what I was talking about, that they haven't changed their motors and there is no "new, faster" motor.

There's just so much wrong information coming back from so many dealers it's hard to make an educated decision.

[matthew knott]

Out if interest how long does it take the trotec to get up to 150 ips, physics not my best subject, 5G doesn't tell us much as we don't know the mass of the cutting head, but 150ips is going some. I'm surprised there isn't a fall off in quality as this would that trotec have held back a bit and more performance may be available but they limit the motion system to insure you cant go over the quality threshold. That then makes me wonder what falls over first, the motion system or the laser tube.
Scott is bang on with the observation on acceleration, it makes a HUGE difference, way more than you would ever expect, you need to see it to believe it!
Also pretty much the fastest we genral go on our galvo lasers is 2000mm/sec or 80 inches/second. This is at 2000mm/s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1nKzF2w3Tg and i know the speed is spot on as you can measure the dots and know the laser pulse frequency. But if you can get a true 150ips and do quality work thats pretty wow.

[Rodne Gold]

1G - 9.8m per sec per sec accel - so it can accelerate at 30 ft per second per second ..5g is 5x as fast. so after the first second at 5g - the head - if it can do 5g acceleration is going at 150ft per second.. 150 inches per second is a lot less than 150ft /sec - 1/12th in fact but from a standstill it wont actually take 1/12th of a sec to get there - probably 1/2 a sec..or a bit less..still has to slow down and then go back the other way , cant do an instant turnaround so there is that to consider...5G is fast - a top fueller dragster does that and goes from 0-320 miles an hour in under 5 seconds - ends up doing round 5600 inches per second after 5 secs!!!!

[Martin Boekers]

It seems you do a fair amount of work and chances at a higher $$ rate then many of us. Think about how long it would take to pay the extra $5k and I think you'll find your answer. :) If you make $100 hour that would pay for itself in a week and a half the rest of the year is bonus!

[matthew knott]

So, done a bit of Man Maths and assuming the laser moves down .1mm per scan (total guess, anyone know) it should take a trotec about 10mins to cover a 10 inch by 10 inch square, so does that sound about right to the owners? What's shocking is the lasers spends over twice as long accelerating/decelerating as actually engraving. Thats why Scott is so right about the trotecs enhanced acceleration.

Maths here (probably wrong)

10 x 10 square = 254mm x 254mm
.1mm step = 2540 scan lines
2540 scan lines x 254mm = 645160mm
150 ips = 3810 mm/sec
645160mm / 3810 = 169.3 seconds
5G acceleration from 0 to 150 ips = 0.08 seconds assume deceleration is the same (?) 2540 x 2 x 0.08 = 406.4 seconds

PS THIS COULD BE TOTAL

[Dan Hintz]

5Gs is 1,930 in/s^2... not going to pull out the calculator, but since it's a squared function, you'll reach 150in/s in something on the order of 100ms.

EDIT: Took two seconds between shows and did the math... looks like it reaches 150ips in 279ms at 5Gs.

[matthew knott]

I used this thing http://www.smartconversion.com/unit_calculation/Acceleration_calculator.aspx and from 0 to 150ips gives me 0.08 seconds at 5g, maybe im not using it right, or its wrong.
Point is you can still get a big saving in time with a fast laser, like the trotec over a cheap one even if the material can't handle the speed.
It would be really great to do some side by side comparison of these lasers. Need something like the official MPG figures cars get, useless in real terms but at least its a yard stick to compare them against.

[Dave Sheldrake]

V0 = 0
V1 = 3.5560 MPS
Accl (5g) = 49.05mps2
T = V1 - V0 / A = (3.5560 - 0)ms / 49.05ms2

0.07249745 seconds to reach 140 Inches per second from rest.

If you need 150 IPS then substitute 3.5560 with 3.8100

cheers

Dave

[Kim Vellore]

From previous discussions on Trotec I was under the impression that the cost is comparable to the Epilogs and others with all the benefits of speed. I am curious as to what is the cost difference do you see in your range of machines.

Kim

[Dan Hintz]

Alright, which one of us is doing the math wrong? ;) Both Matt and Dave mention roughly 0.08s... but if you multiply that by the number of feet in a meter you get my answer of 0.27 (ish).

y=1930x^2, where y is the velocity (in inches per sec) and x is time.

y=150, so x=sqrt(150/1930)) = 0.279s

Where did I screw that up? Did I forget a conversion someplace? My original guess of roughly 100ms is much closer to reality...

[Dave Sheldrake]

Your original 100ms is actually pretty much bang on Dan :) the 0.07249745 doesn't allow for magnitude of the vector sum of (a) backwards and (g) downward forces which are at a tan (inverse) of a/g to the vertical giving a more accurate value of 0.098996578 seconds to reach 140 ips.

You seem to have missed the squared cancellation Dan,

G measured in MPS^2

Velocity measured in MPS

When it comes to the final calculation the MPS cancels the ^2 so leaving mps/mps

best wishes

Dave

[Scott Shepherd]

Alright, which one of us is doing the math wrong? ;) Both Matt and Dave mention roughly 0.08s... but if you multiply that by the number of feet in a meter you get my answer of 0.27 (ish).

y=1930x^2, where y is the velocity (in inches per sec) and x is time.

y=150, so x=sqrt(150/1930)) = 0.279s

Where did I screw that up? Did I forget a conversion someplace? My original guess of roughly 100ms is much closer to reality...

I think Matt and Dave used Metric Time :D

[Keith Outten]

In another thread awhile back I provided some metrics concerning three laser engravers. Not exactly scientific mind you but they were numbers based on a 12 month period. We engraved hundreds of ADA signs for three large buildings last year. In January we were using both a Trotec Speedy 300 75 watt machine and a Xenetech XLT-60 watt machine. Because of the workload I convinced my Supervisor to purchase the Trotec so we could use two machines so we would not risk being late getting the signs completed.

I believe the 60 watt Xenetech machine was capable of 140 ips and I don't know what the acceleration spec was for that machine. What happened was that after the first two months we shut down the Xenetech laser and ran the Trotec 8 hours per day because it was more than twice as fast as the Xenetech and we had gotten ahead of schedule. Now, the same Corian signs engraved on both machines over a two month period indicated that the Xenetech took an average of 12 minutes per sign and the Trotec took 5 minutes per sign.

In my workshop my old 35 watt Epilog Legend averaged 25 minutes per sign for the same type of job. I now own an 80 watt Trotec Speedy 300 which averages engraving an ADA door sign in 4 minutes.

You can do the numbers on cost savings based on just labor alone if you like but the bottom line is if you have a lot of work to do the Trotec Speedy machines are the best value hands down when measured against any machine I know of in the industry and they pay for themselves real quick. I know that you have to make some allowances for the difference in laser wattage but that isn't the only reason for the difference in performance.
.

[Scott Shepherd]

I don't know what a millisecond looks like, but I know what fast looks like when a laser is running :)

I did the following, and perhaps I'll start another thread because it's probably a good place to start actually comparing real world data.

I took a solid black rectangle (or square) and rastered it at 100% speed at 500dpi on the Universal and the Trotec. I used their estimate systems, which have both been accurate within a few seconds in my experience.

Size -------Universal-------Trotec
1"x3"---------1:40-----------1:00
1"x6"---------1:58-----------1:14
1"x12"--------2:34-----------1:37
1"x24"--------4:04-----------2:20

Changed to more vertical than horizontal

12"x3"-------19:22---------12:00
12"x6"-------24:01---------14:48
12"x12"------32:21---------19:24
12"x24"------48:38---------28:00

In my opinion, those are substantial time differences, time differences that I believe justify, in our business, the difference in cost.

[Mike Null]

To reinforce that a bit my typical job is 77 nametags 1" x 3" individually cut with rounded corners from 12" x 24" x .030" laminated plastic. I run that job in just under 28 minutes at about 65% speed. Speed will vary based on image and color as not all engrave equally.

[Dave Sheldrake]

12" wide x 24" Height @ 500DPI on Chinese Gantry 1:10.27 (Hrs/Min/Sec)

24" wide x 12" high @ 500DPI on Chinese gantry 1:06.12 (Hrs/Min/Sec)

NOT run at 100% stepper speed as anything over a set speed of 500mm p/s gives poor results (and would likely kill the motors pretty quick).(around a theoretical 1/2 those times for the machines 1,000mm "top" speed)

Wasn't any point comparing the Vytek as that's not really a machine people would consider.

cheers

Dave

[Dan Hintz]

24" wide x 12" high @ 500DPI on Chinese gantry 1:06.12 (Hrs/Min/Sec)

That puts the Chinese machines at around 5:30 for a 1" x 24" strip... 70% of the ULS's speed, and 40% of the Trotec's speed.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Probably worse than that Dan, they have quite an over-run at the edges to cope with (although it can be changed it's not a good idea to),

I'll go run off a 1" x 24" and see what it comes back as.

cheers

Dave

back


That puts the Chinese machines at around 5:30

exactly :)

Vertical 13:40
Horizontal 5:30

[matthew knott]

more proof that the machine you buy depends so much on what you are doing with it, Our Shenui was turned on today for the first time in 4 days, ran 6 parts, each took 10 mins. Now its off again and staying that way for maybe a week. Would love a trotec, but for ME i cant justify the cost, for others like Scott, the enhanced performance and quality are a no-brainer.
This is good information that should allow members here to make a more informed choice. Personally i want Trotec engineering and Chinese prices (guess i can dream on!)

[Dave Sheldrake]

I'll run off some cut pieces as well to compare.

I wanna Vytek or Mitsubishi available in Poundland Matt but that's not gonna happen either ;)

cheers

Dave

[Scott Shepherd]

more proof that the machine you buy depends so much on what you are doing with it, Our Shenui was turned on today for the first time in 4 days, ran 6 parts, each took 10 mins. Now its off again and staying that way for maybe a week. Would love a trotec, but for ME i cant justify the cost, for others like Scott, the enhanced performance and quality are a no-brainer.
This is good information that should allow members here to make a more informed choice. Personally i want Trotec engineering and Chinese prices (guess i can dream on!)

Matthew, our lasers don't run every day either and it's rare that we get the big quantity jobs. The vast majority of things we do are 1 and 2 items, but it really does add up quickly.

I'd say that having that speed has ALLOWED us to go after those larger jobs. So in reality, it's helped us pull a lot more work in.

[Ben Dalton]

Wow, I think this is the best discussion on various laser speeds I've ever read--especially when it comes to real world data. Scott, those raster comparisons you did are just what I was looking for! We run most of our wood at 500 dpi, so those comparisons were perfect. We do our granite at 250 dpi, and we do lots of 6"x12" and 12"x12" jobs. Is there any way you could run a 6x12 and 12x12 raster test on your trotec at 250 dpi, 100% speed? That would help me compare real-world what our time difference would end up being, at least on the machine we already have. I'll run the same tests you did on our explorer and post the results as well. Thanks again, it never ceases to amaze me how great this forum is--it's so helpful.

[Scott Shepherd]

Ben, it's as simple as cutting the time in half. I posted about a granite tile we did some time ago when we first got our machine. We had abandon trying to get granite tile work because the average time was in the 35-50 minute area on the Universal. Got the Trotec and did a tile in less than 10 minutes if memory serves me correctly. I think it was at 250dpi as well.

Here's the clip-note that I took the woman's image into Photoshop and brought out a lot of detail in her face. Her husband came in, said "You changed her face color, change it back, that's not what she looked like. Make it whiter" (she had passed away). So I know her face is blown out, but that's what he wanted and he loved it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8voX7ldqY3I

[Ben Dalton]

Scott, I thought that might be the case... Thanks, and I'll post the numbers from my explorer when I get a chance to run the numbers.

[Ben Dalton]

Ok, so I copied Scott's numbers and added my own in case anyone wanted to see the comparison side by side. Again, the test was a solid black rectangle or square rastered at 500 dpi at 100% speed.

Size -------Universal-------Trotec--------GCC Explorer
1"x3"---------1:40-----------1:00------------1:00
1"x6"---------1:58-----------1:14------------1:20
1"x12"--------2:34-----------1:37------------1:59
1"x24"--------4:04-----------2:20------------3:16

Changed to more vertical than horizontal

12"x3"-------19:22---------12:00------------11:20
12"x6"-------24:01---------14:48------------15:09
12"x12"------32:21---------19:24------------22:57
12"x24"------48:38---------28:00------------38:23

The results weren't exactly what I expected. With such a higher ips rating, I thought the trotec might blow everything away. My 7 year old (now discontinued) GCC machine didn't do too bad. I think trotec is still the clear winner--especially with very large files, but I can live with the results I got. Rodney said back in the thread that the spirit machines are faster than the explorers too, so if you can get better speed than the tests I ran, I think the GCC machines are definitely in the running with the other top laser brands, at least in speed. From what I've researched, the GCC spirits can also be run at 100% speed without quality loss on granite.

[Rodne Gold]

We use 100% speed ALWAYS as a default with our GCC machines - always have .. only drop down when we need more than 100% power .. no issues with quality at that speed and most of my stuff is high end awards where quality is paramount. Solid squares do have some relevance in testing , but there are other factors in real life , for eg the GCC machines can skip white space and use cluster for even faster strategies to do stuff..for eg lets say you have a 10mm diameter dot at the left and right top corner of an a4 drawing , the GCC will not scan back and forth to do the dots in a line , it will do the one dot fast and then move to the other and complete it ... if there is significant white space between engraved elements on a single scan line , the spirits will default to max speed between the elements , even if your actual set speed for engraving is low...
As I have said before , there is a big difference between max speed and throughput..
Oddly enough , some machines can be SLOWER at max speed then slower speeds due to the machine ramp up to max speed.. our chinese machines are FASTER at lets say 200mm/sec doing s small name or small engraving than at double the speed as the head overshoots a lot more at high speed so it can slow and then ramp up to max on the return stroke , actually taking MORE time to do the work

[Scott Shepherd]

Ben, that's what I would expect to see. The GCC does well on shorter strokes. The Trotec needs a little length to get up to speed. That's why a number of us say it's impossible to answer "what laser should I buy" questions when we have no idea what the business model is for the person asking the question. You mentioned doing a lot of tiles. On a 12" x 12" tile, the Trotec is 17% faster and, if you put 2 on the table, that's 12" x 24", where it's 37% faster. Those numbers are real and in a year's time, add up to a lot more money in your pocket. Would I spend $5,000 more to get a 37% increase in production? Absolutely.

However, if you plan on doing 1 offs and small pieces, like 1 or 2 name tags at a time, then it's obviously not an advantage to spend the extra money.

I'd spend $5,000 more to get 10% more production, so at 17% or 37%, that's an easy decision for me in our business, because we do lot of longer stroke engraving as well as a lot of vector cutting.

[Dan Hintz]

The GCC does well on shorter strokes. The Trotec needs a little length to get up to speed.

Are you saying the GCC has an acceleration greater than Trotec's already speed (no pun intended) 5 Gs? That would be impressive...

[Scott Shepherd]

Are you saying the GCC has an acceleration greater than Trotec's already speed (no pun intended) 5 Gs? That would be impressive...

I don't know about g's and forces and all those fancy things, but I know that for small areas, 100% speed isn't 100% speed. I'm only suggesting that for smaller areas, with the speed being slower on the GCC, it's able to reach IT'S maximum speed, so for a 2" wide area, it's reaching 100% speed (or close), where as the Trotec can't reach 140ips in 2" time and decelerate in time to stop. It's just not possible.

I think you can see that in the fact that to do a 3" wide area, it's 1:00, but to do something 8 times longer (24"), it's only double the time, not 8 times the time.

[Ben Dalton]

Right now, we definitely do more small jobs, (pics to be in-laid into headstones are our biggest money maker) but like the bigger tables because, as said in other threads, it lets you take on the bigger jobs--which we have been able to get sometimes. We are pushing doing more big jobs, as obviously the profit margin is better, thus the interest in speed. We recently constructed a tile, double wall (5'x5' each wall) veteran and everyday heroes memorial on our property, as that is definitely a niche we cater to. We wanted to show how amazing the laser engraving can be, and it turned out, well, amazing... I'll post a pic. But I do agree with Rodney that the throughput features like speeding up between or skipping over blank space can be very beneficial. I know GCC is thorough on some of those features in the promotion literature, but some of the others (like what Rodney talked about) they don't really mention. I would think they would want to tout those features more. Then again, I'm an engraving nerd (meant in a good way), so most people probably don't get as nitty gritty as I do.... Sometimes I over research things, but it's fun for me anyway, so I don't mind. Thanks to all for all the advice and knowledge. I'm passing it on to the owner, and he'll make the final decision. I don't think we can go wrong with either the Trotec or the Spirit machines.
268723268722268727

[Keith Outten]

Ben,

Very nice work on the Memorials, they are impressive.
.

[Scott Shepherd]

First, and mainly, Ben, that's beautiful work! Thanks for sharing!

Second, the Universal and Trotec do that "skipping" think Rodney mentioned. They don't engrave dead space just to be engraving dead space. If you have a full line of engraving, followed by a single word, followed by another full line, they'll engrave the full line, then adjust the stroke to the single word, then back to the full line again. So that's not unique to GCC. Our Universal has always done that as well.

[Ben Dalton]

Is that what Rodne meant? It sounded to me that if you have two small objects on the same horizontal line (directly left and right of each other), but with a lot of space in between, the GCCs will do the one object on the left first, then move to the other on the right and do it, then move on down to the rest of the engraving. Is that right? Do the other lasers do that as well?

[Ben Dalton]

By the way, thanks for the praise Scott and Keith, I worked really hard on that memorial :).

[Rodne Gold]

The GCC's have the skip white space option..they also have whats called a "cluster" option (which is automatically implemented in obvious cases) where you can actually specify the distance for it to be operational..eg you have a sheet of material with 7 items in it , you can tell it if the items are more than x distance apart , to do them as individual items complete the engraving and go on to the other and not to scan back and forth. There are also optimisation settings , where the laser will work out the shortest path to engrave and to remove overlapping lines etc. and to ignore the order things were created in and not to jump around and so on.
I'm sure most mainstream lasers have more or less the same things.

I have multiple lasers and multiple operators , who are low level staff and salaries here are no where near what you would have to pay in the US .. My highest level operator gets $165 a week and the median is about $120 a week. (which is not a bad salary in South Africa ) I have excess capacity for the work we currently have and can easily cope in the hectic season (oct/nov) so it really doesn't matter to me how long things take...It's not *my* time which is expensive.. I pay the operators whether an item takes 2 secs or 2 mins... that's what makes it different for me than some other operations. I also don't view my lasers as capital investment , albeit they are , I view them as tools to create a product I sell and amortize them over a very short period - 2-3 years , any production i get out of them after that is a bonus. I would rather invest the $20k I save by buying a $5k slower chinese machine vs a $25k superfast mainstream in stock as it turns over quicker and makes me a lot more profit than being able to engrave faster , we make the money by selling finished products and not mainly via engraving...different strokes for different folks based on the type of business you have.

[Dan Hintz]

My highest level operator gets $165 a week and the median is about $120 a week. (which is not a bad salary in South Africa )

Yeah, impossible to compete with that in the US... even people operating cash registers or slinging burgers at the local McDonald's make $8/hr to start... so in two days they've already made more than your median salary guy did all week. A typical "operator" for businesses like hours likely wouldn't make less than $15-20/hr (to be fair, I'm guesstimating as I don't have any employees myself), or 5-7 times what your operator does. If you have several employees, we also have to kick in retirement taxes and such, which doubles the amount out of our pocket.

[Scott Shepherd]

I agree Rodney, if time and labor wasn't a factor, then buying a more expensive machine would be pointless. However, you're in one of the few places in the world that live that way. My guess would be that 99% of people reading this forum don't have what we'd consider "free" labor. What you pay in 1 week, we'd come close to paying in 1 day, so labor is a large part of our decision and why it's so important for us to get the job in, get it done, and get it paid for as quickly as possible.

It also sounds like GCC does have some unique features as well. I think in all the shows I've been to over the last 6 or 7 years, I've seen GCC at one of them. It's a real shame that they don't sent machines to trade shows. Sounds like they have some nice features and are well built.