"Open-architecture" lasers

[Matt Turner (physics)]

I just ran across an ad for these folks today: aplazer.com. It's an interesting idea and reminds me of ShopBot's Handibot (https://handibot.com/).

[Paul Phillips]

Hi Matt, I'm sure Kieth will probably respond, he used to have one of these and I remember he sold it off because it was sooo slow, novel idea though and I'm sure someone could make money with it with the right customer base/ niche market.

[Keith Outten]

Paul is correct, I had an APLaser 80 watt machine and it was painfully slow. It's a great concept having the capability to remove the upper section and be able to place it on top of very large projects but the speed made it impossible for me to engrave signs for commercial jobs. It took about 30 minutes to engrave a door sign using the APLaser and the same sign takes 4 minutes on my Trotec 80 watt machine.
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[Richard Rumancik]

I wonder what the issue was with speed - there shouldn't be any reason that this type of laser needs to be any slower than a conventional "cube" laser system. I looked at a few specs and it looks like 30ips for most of the machines with the largest machine engraving at 25ips.

[Keith Outten]

30 ips is a long way from 150 ips which is the speed of the Trotec. There are times when I have 3 to 4 hundred door sign blanks in front of my laser engraver and right behind them a stack of rather large evacuation maps and stairwell signs to engrave.

Honestly I suspect the power was not up to spec on the APLaser as I have to slow the Trotec down in order to get the required 0.034" engraving depth in my solid surface sign blanks. The time difference of 26 minutes per door sign made the APLaser just to slow for commercial sign work in my shop.