Buying a rotary attachment, need advice...

[Craig Lawson]

I have an x700 laser that I'm looking to buy a rotary attachment for. There seem to be three styles and I'm not sure about the pros/cons of each. There are the hotdog roller style with knurled rods spanning a metal frame, a type with two sets of wheels the material sits on top of, and a style built like a lathe with a chuck and tailstock.

Without having used any of them I can think of various pros/cons to each, but I don't want to assume I know what I'm doing before I purchase one.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Kev Williams]

The chuck style holds your part, this means the part won't move, so if you have to engrave it 100 times it'll engrave in the same place each time...

The only thing 'roller' styles hold is your patience and nerves hostage while you pray the part doesn't move AND gets done right the first time in case it does... ;)

If you're going to engrave other people's stuff- wedding glasses, Yeti's, etc- you want a chuck style. :)

[Mike Null]

+1 on Kev's comments

[John Lifer]

I agree, I've a four wheel and it works, built a small chuck style and I love it. Get chuck.

[Craig Lawson]

Thanks Kev, that's what I was leaning toward. I suppose that using rollers can cause the part to creep if they aren't perfectly parallel. Could this not be remedied with stops on either end of the material?

[Kev Williams]

as a reference, I point to my pinch-wheel vinyl cutters; even though the vinyl/backing is 'held' and fed by rubber wheels under a good amount of spring pressure, rarely was I ever able to cut 8' long x 7" wide rectangles (racing stripes :)) and have the starting and ending points match up. Because the vinyl CAN walk, it does...

[Bill Carruthers]

The chuck style holds your part, this means the part won't move, so if you have to engrave it 100 times it'll engrave in the same place each time...

The only thing 'roller' styles hold is your patience and nerves hostage while you pray the part doesn't move AND gets done right the first time in case it does... ;)

If you're going to engrave other people's stuff- wedding glasses, Yeti's, etc- you want a chuck style. :)

Couldn't agree more Kev- I got both about 5 years ago and while I don't do a lot of stuff requiring a rotary, I use the chuck one about 2 or 3 times a month - the roller was used twice- once to see if how, and if, it worked; and once on a job which it totally screwed up. It's only benefit for me is that it provided a stepper motor to replace a blown one in one of my lasers:-). That said, the roller can be useful if you are doing a lot of repetitive things that don't require exact registration and can be done for sure in one pass (some wine glasses etc.) as changing them over is much quicker than with a chuck style.