Dan Hintz
01-16-2008, 10:46 PM
I received my Chinese laser (eBay, not direct from China) Tuesday and unboxed two of the three smaller boxes... power supply, water pump, fan, tubing, etc. Nothing special, but nothing that screamed POS.
Tonight I unboxed the main cabinet, and that's when things took a slight turn downhill. Lots of rattling, which is never a good sign ;) I now have a small pile of various-sized screws, lock washers, etc., an aluminum knob that I have no clue what it goes to,
and the first mirror (closest to the laser tube) fell out during shipping... it's a complete loss after being scraped along the face over 1,500 miles of shipping.
Okay, so in the grand scheme of things these are minimal items, and the seller should have little issue with sending me a replacement mirror, but it annoys me nonetheless. After I get a new mirror, I still have to hook everything up and try out the tube itself, the water pump, etc.
My thoughts on it so far? The cabinet is beefy enough to last for the long haul. The electronics still use through-hole construction almost exclusively (I found a few surface-mount resistors on a, surprise, DIP-chip retrofit board). They tried to do things correctly with heatshrink, but they ended up melting the insulation off of the wire itself in at least one spot. The working area is surprisingly small considering the size of the cabinet... they could have either doubled the working area or shrunk the cabinet by at least 1/3rd. There is a connector on the back with no apparent use, but I have not tracked it back to its source yet. The holes for the water lines are barely large enough to get the supplied lines through, and no rubber grommets are provided to prevent chafing against the metal chassis. The machine was designed for the European market, so they included a 120V-to-240V converter... a bit larger than a computer PSU with the screws missing from one side of the cover.
More thoughts once I get it up and running...
Tonight I unboxed the main cabinet, and that's when things took a slight turn downhill. Lots of rattling, which is never a good sign ;) I now have a small pile of various-sized screws, lock washers, etc., an aluminum knob that I have no clue what it goes to,
and the first mirror (closest to the laser tube) fell out during shipping... it's a complete loss after being scraped along the face over 1,500 miles of shipping.
Okay, so in the grand scheme of things these are minimal items, and the seller should have little issue with sending me a replacement mirror, but it annoys me nonetheless. After I get a new mirror, I still have to hook everything up and try out the tube itself, the water pump, etc.
My thoughts on it so far? The cabinet is beefy enough to last for the long haul. The electronics still use through-hole construction almost exclusively (I found a few surface-mount resistors on a, surprise, DIP-chip retrofit board). They tried to do things correctly with heatshrink, but they ended up melting the insulation off of the wire itself in at least one spot. The working area is surprisingly small considering the size of the cabinet... they could have either doubled the working area or shrunk the cabinet by at least 1/3rd. There is a connector on the back with no apparent use, but I have not tracked it back to its source yet. The holes for the water lines are barely large enough to get the supplied lines through, and no rubber grommets are provided to prevent chafing against the metal chassis. The machine was designed for the European market, so they included a 120V-to-240V converter... a bit larger than a computer PSU with the screws missing from one side of the cover.
More thoughts once I get it up and running...