Newer Universal machines slower than the older ones?

[Tim Warris]

We recently added a second machine to our shop as our 10 year old 35 watt M-300 was starting to show its age, and we have had an increase in work. We purchased a VLS460 60W unit just before Christmas. In what is quite a disappointing observation, the VLS460 is noticeably SLOWER at vector cutting smaller parts than our M-300. We have several thousand different parts we vector cut from various thicknesses of plywood. Doing a side by side "race" between the two machines we found what took 40 minutes on the M-300 takes 1:12 on the VLS460!

On parts with longer cuts, the VLS460 is much faster as the increase in power lets us drive it quicker, however, on anything with smaller cuts, or vector text, the new unit is almost useless as a production machine. Feedback from Universals tech department informs us that this is the case, the older machines are faster. Had I known that I would have certainly gone in a different direction, very disappointing.

Anyone else notice this new "feature" of a slower machine?

-T.

[Kev Williams]

Slower even with double the power? Maybe it's time to move down to a Chinese machine? ;)

I haven't given my new Triumph many tests yet, but as for cutting thru 1/16" thick Rowmark, the thing is an animal-- Last week I had to cut 280 3x10" plates with two 1/4" holes- I can get 36 of those out of a 24x48" sheet, and the Triumph took just over 3 minutes to cut & drill the 36 plates. Less than 25 minutes to cut and drill all 280 plates. Another ongoing job I have is odd-shaped name badges. 53 of them fit on a 12x24" sheet. It takes my LS900 40w around 9 minutes to do a single-pass cut. The Triumph (80w) cuts them in 3:28.

I don't have much experience with curved stuff yet...

Just thought of something, our old circa 1996 New Hermes Optima 25w (which is a Universal) used to do blazing fast vector runs, power permitting- I used to vector a logo that was a signature on some anodized parts, it would run the cut just as if you were writing it with a pen on paper. Then one day my NH rep upgraded the firmware, which I've hated. Instead of smooth vector runs, it now runs in "chunks", speeding up then slowing down between every control point. It's like watching a woodpecker... WAY slower than before. Also, in the engraving properties dialog, the "pick my own lines-per-inch" feature got changed out with a stupid "image density" slider--So far, no one at New Hermes has been able to tell me how many lines per inch each number represents. The machine's display used to tell you, now it never changes from 500/500, regardless of the actual settings.

Anyway, I said all that to ask: I wonder if their may be a firmware update available? At the least, I'd call your rep or Universal and let them know you feel that a machine with 100% more power that's only 50% as fast as the old machine is unacceptable!

280742

[Tim Warris]

OK, now to eat my words...

I received a Beta version of the UCP driver from Universal this afternoon. Hidden (literally) in the settings is a "Hyperspeed" option. Once enabled, the 1:12 time for a job run dropped to :31, better then half the time, with no noticeable quality deterioration. The machine moves blindingly fast compared to before, and compared to the older M-300.

I suspect this will be released out of Beta soon.

Quite impressed!

-T.