Questions about Rabbit Laser

[Kristopher Powers]

Good day all,
First of all first post yay:D
Second, looks like this tread has died so I'm bumping it.
Next, Thinking about buying a rabbit, I would love to get the RL-80-1290 but unfortunately I will be running this out of my house and do not have 240, so I'm looking at a RL-60-9060 with the 80w upgrade. (sigh losing some cutting space). I digress, I am wondering if I am making the correct decision an questioning why more people do not buy them. The price seams very reasonable and the support from what I have read is A+. Software I have read is lacking but I'm not sure if that has changed in the last few years. I do not live close ~1,200 miles away, so I cant go a look at one or pick it up.

I am concerned since I will be doing this out of my garage that I may surge the switches as I have read on other forms. I have not checked the breakers. (Anybody that cuts at home, with an industrial cutter, have any advice about this cutting at home i would be grateful )
A little about what I will be doing: I am a one man band thinking about starting a side business doing laser cutting for the local hobbyists in the area, and doing cutting for the local school's to tech students about engineering. the time on the cutter will be very up and down. Ie. I will have 1 week of very heavy use then 2 weeks or so of no use at all. Heavy use meaning a lot of balsa, cardboard and plexi glass, all different jobs but all the same material during that week.

I know the rabbit is not the fastest but I cant afford the speedy, maybe another time. I will not do any raster just cutting. I am waiting on a quote form universal lasers, and a lot of searching on the forms have pushed me away from the other 2 main brands ( Epilog and Full spectrum) although I have read that Epilog has one of the best software. I have talked to a few other laser owners 2 have Universal and love it and the other has an Epilog (have only talked to customers and they say they like his cuts) so I would be a new cutter in town with the rabbit.

So again with all that being said. Am I heading in the right direction or do I need to make a U-Turn.

[Scott Shepherd]

Kristopher posted this to an old thread and I pulled it out and made it it's own topic to make it easier.

[Patrick Smithwick]

We bought a RL-60-9060 last year when we started our business. Overall we have been happy with the machine. There is a bit of a learning curve to learn how to use Corel and Lasercut but it does happen over time. It has helped grow our business to the point that we just bought an Epilog as we needed the greater speed and extra capacity of a second CO2 machine. I will list out some pros and cons for you.

Pros:
Price was reasonable
Owner came out and set it up and showed us the basics
Speed is adequate for vast majority of what we do
Quality of engraved work is very good
Parts availabilty if needed
Reasonably easy to use

Cons:
Software crashes from time to time and not the most user friendly
Cabinet fooprint is fairly large
Not the easiest to clean lens and mirrors but not bad
Supplied vac system really is not strong enough
Rotary is not the easiest to set up and use
Sometimes hard to get immediate tech help due to only a few people there (but helpful when you get a hold of them!)

All in all we are very happy with our purchase from them. Is it on par with an Epilog or Trotec? No. Nor is the price. For a large # of people doing small production work and hobby I would definitely recommend one and would buy another if I didn't need the speed. We will be using ours just like always in addition to the Epilog we just purchased.

[Kev Williams]

About rather having a 1290-- If you have 120 then you do have 240 in your house. It's not that big a deal to add a dedicated circuit to run the machine. Even if you use a 120v model, it's best to have a dedicated line for that too, so if you're going to run a line, might as well go 240!

It's just a matter of adding a 240 breaker and the wiring. If you don't have room in your breaker box for another breaker, you just need to add a sub panel, which is probably a good idea anyway, as it can be mounted near your machine. If business grows and you need to add equipment, like a compressor and/or another machine, power to run them is already in place.

If you can do this yourself it's around $200 or so is all. If need be, an electrician will cost more obviously, but the few extra bucks isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things :)

[Kristopher Powers]

About rather having a 1290-- If you have 120 then you do have 240 in your house. It's not that big a deal to add a dedicated circuit to run the machine. Even if you use a 120v model, it's best to have a dedicated line for that too, so if you're going to run a line, might as well go 240!


Unfortunately I rent a house so not sure the cost would be worth it to install a new line. I have read you can run a line outside the walls to reduce cost but not sure how much cost that would be.

[Patrick Smithwick]

As far as wiring is concerned it is as easy as running one more wiring strand. If you have a single wide type breaker you can remove it and put a double in it's place.

[Kristopher Powers]

Cons:
Software crashes from time to time and not the most user friendly
Cabinet fooprint is fairly large
Not the easiest to clean lens and mirrors but not bad
Supplied vac system really is not strong enough
.

Patrick,

I have read that there is supplementary software out there, all I remember is something about lasers[something].org and they have some open sorce software. Do you have any experience with that? (sorry i am not more exact I have to look it up)

[Ernie Balch]

My 80W rabbit 1290 is almost 4 years old and it has worked perfectly until a month ago. After reading rabbitlaser usa FAQ and doing some troubleshooting, I replaced the tube and power supply and am back up and running. I run the lasercut driver right out of Corel X4 which is easier than using Lasercut alone. We often make use of the large workspace and often need just a little bigger stage 1200x900mm is not quite 36x48" For the money I am very happy with the Rabbit laser, I can put up with the software glitches that comes with Chinese lasers. I would get one of the big three lasers if they had bigger stages.

[Keith Winter]

Kris you mention you have a rent house. You might think about your situation more before you buy a laser. Upgrading electrical circuits, cutting holes in walls for vent hosing, and the other things that go with a laser install. You might get that laser installed and then have a landlord evict you when he finds out. If I was your landlord I wouldn't be cool with that. Better talk with him before you do anything.

[Kristopher Powers]

Messaged him this morning. The place I rent has a 3 car garage with a door to the back yard that I plan on just opening during the job and run a flexible vent housing to the outside not sure if this is enough. I just asked for a 240 upgrade to one wall giving me 4 240 outlets. From what I read on the web page Rabbit said you need 3 240v ( Cutter, Fan, chiller) and one extra for my EV :-) and if questions arise I could always blame it on the EV.



...and the other things that go with a laser install.

What other things?

[Kristopher Powers]

How fast is 36,000mm/min cutting speed? How does this compare to other cutters out there? I did a quick search but my google foo is not that good these days.

[George M. Perzel]

Kris;
That's close to 2 feet per sec- maybe cut paper but that's about it. Chinese steppers start to get cranky at that speed and weird things happen.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[Keith Winter]

Messaged him this morning. The place I rent has a 3 car garage with a door to the back yard that I plan on just opening during the job and run a flexible vent housing to the outside not sure if this is enough. I just asked for a 240 upgrade to one wall giving me 4 240 outlets. From what I read on the web page Rabbit said you need 3 240v ( Cutter, Fan, chiller) and one extra for my EV :-) and if questions arise I could always blame it on the EV.




What other things?

For one your renters insurance won't cover damage if you have an accident. You will be personally responsible for replacing his house and any property damaged. The venting out an open door is also a bad idea, the wind will blow it right back in. Better to cut a hole in a window or door and properly vent it. Those and the electrical are the biggest things. If your landlord is cool with it and you get proper insurance, and a properly licensed electrician to do the work, you should be ok. If you wire it yourself you void the insurance in most cases when the electrical is being used for business purposes. The electrians insurance takes responsibility for bad wiring if he's licensed and something goes wrong. As a point of reference we are in a commercial space, cost about $500-$600 for a licensed electrian to wire our last laser, fuse box had free space and it was about 20 feet away. Yours will cost more to wire at 240v. I don't have my costs yet to wire my Chinese laser I ordered last month, but I'm budgeting close to double with all the converters and such electrican said I may need based on paper specs, plus the extra grounding.

[Keith Winter]

I wouldn't worry about cut speed Chris you'll never achieve it. As George said only way you go that fast is cutting paper. Normally you'll be cutting at a fraction of that speed, laser power is your limiting factor when cutting.

[Bert Kemp]

I'm very happy so far with my 6040 60 watt cut speeds are good and it engraves well . i THink you only need 240 for the laser the chiller and exhaust are 110. don't bother with the 3000 chiller get the 5000. my 60 watt cuts 4 mm Baltic Birch at 12 mmps. A flex hose out the door will work ok as long as no wind blowing it back into building lol

[Kev Williams]

One of my pet peeves is quoting laser speeds in MINUTES. It's like grocery store price tags that say 10 FOR $10!! -- makes me grind my teeth... ;)

36,000mm per minute is 600mm per second. 500-600 mm/sec is typical for Chinese machines. My triumph supposedly has a 500mm max, but I run it at 700mm quite often. Any faster and the engraving starts to suffer a bit.

As for insurance, you can insure anything for a price... :)

[Keith Winter]

I think if you bought some commercial liability insurance and named your landlord as an insured it would cover most things that plus an umbrella policy should get you covered, but I'm not an insurance agent so it would be best to check with one for the exact details. Talk to commercial agent, I'm not sure those residential folks know much about business use stuff, they might tell you something incorrect and leave you uncovered.

[Kristopher Powers]

On the Rabbit Usa web page he says you can upgrade the laser. Does that mean I could put a ceramic or a metal tube in it if I wanted? (I am assuming no because of the liquid cooled)

[Bert Kemp]

I think probably not. Upgrades on a co2 laser usually mean you can put in a more powerful tube. But I would CALL! and ask to make certain.

[Marshal Jones]

I bought a Rabbit Lasers QX-80-9060 in January of 2015 and ran it heavily for a year before I sold the business to travel. I had all the same problems as the OP. (Ran the business out of my garage, I rented so couldn't do a permanent install, 240v or 120v problems...)

The only problems I had were ones I expected for a budget machine. Door latches stopped working and needed to be adjusted often, buttons on the control panel didn't always work, engrave speeds were slower than advertised.

That being said, the machine performed well where it counts most. No problems with consistent positioning for re-running a program. I didn't have to adjust focus after the initial setup. Software didn't crash. The belts didnt slip. (Well they slipped once but that was my fault.) It really was a good machine, especially for the price.

I did a writeup about my machine purchase on my blog and will write more in the upcoming weeks. Heres a link: http://trail70engineer.blogspot.de/2017/04/co2-laser-engraver-purchase.html