Universal Lasers / Larger machines? Kern, Trumpf, Trotec SP series

[Jay Selway]

Hey, do any of you guys have the larger ULS laser (ILS12.75)? I am in the market for a larger format laser, and like the possibility of being able to run half a sheet of plywood on these. However, nobody near me has one, and before I buy one I want to try it out.

Similarly, do any of you have a large format Trotec, Kern, or Trumpf machine? Ideally I'd get a 4'x8' kern, but they are damn expensive - so waiting for that.

[Braden Todd]

I have the 4x8 Kern and really love it!!! Kern does offer a smaller version too, have you looked at their HSE 50? If I need another machine and don't have room for a larger table, the HSE 50 would be where I started looking. Call Keith and tell him I told you to talk to him and he will take care of you very well!

Good luck!

[Jay Selway]

Thanks Braden.

Hypothetically speaking, if you had to run an engrave job on the entire 4x8 bed (assuming you were running a giant black-filled rectangle), how long would it take? Trying to get a sense of speed comparison between kern, uls, epilog and trotec.

[Mark Sipes]

What a Bazar question. What power are you looking for to darken the Rectangle.. Depth? DPI 250/500/600/1000 ? I only ask because I am sure the speed of a 60 W vs the speed of a 400W are vastly different to achieve the same results. Others will add to this comparison or maybe it's just me! Just based on the specs I can find the Kern runs 150 In/sec while the Trotec is 79 In/sec up to 400W.





.

[Timothy Kamp]

Just curious - have you looked at any other large format lasers? I have 3 big machines right now - 1800x1200 machines from Lightobject.com and my new 2500x1400 machine should arrive this week. I run them 14-18 hours a day cutting plywood and have been pretty happy so far. From my perspective, it's a pretty good machine for the price. I was extremely skeptical about buying a hybrid Chinese machine, but I bought one, loved it, bought a second, and now a third. I actually flew out to CA last weekend to meet Marco of Lightobject.com and tour his shop. One of these days I'll post a full writeup of what I saw there as well as a full review of my machines now that I've had them almost 6 months. Either way, to answer your question, we run our 1800x1200mm machines overnight for big engrave jobs and are finding that it does a full 4x6' bed at 500mm/s X travel and 0.1mm resolution on X (so ~12000 passes and a LOT of intricate carving and line cutting in under 10 hours. We could speed up the line cutting, but it just isn't worth it when it's the job that runs overnight. Here's a pic of a full bed engrave with cutting. Detail shot following that.
333787
http://i.imgur.com/Erng4eO.jpg

[Braden Todd]

Sorry for the delay, shop got a little needy.

So for a 48x96" giant black box my Kern is at 4:53, this is at 300dpi with 28801 passes. I did add the metal cutting option so my max speed is 130"/sec not 150"/sec, but in my opinion it is a great add on to have.

Call Keith and tell him I referred you, then join the Kern club!