Total noob, what should I know?

[Dean H Smith]

Well, I have done a little due diligence. I have the info sheets from Universal and Epilog. I met with the semi-local Epilog guy and had him do a test run on some acrylic. The 'final' product looked great, but was far too slow to justify the cost of the machine (12 minutes for an 8" x 8" engraving, which seemed very slow from the research I had done - but apparently he couldn't get it to work any faster).

That led me to explore other options for our product (a gaming board), but none seem to be the right answer (plus a laser would give us options for other products). Then I ran across a small Chinese laser on eBay. Right price (great price), but it didn't take long to find the (possible) problems.

So, I’m looking for some tips.

Are there any distributors of Chinese lasers in the Northeast? I figure seeing one in action and having support close by would help if any problems come up (although I realize that's one of the reasons why they are so cheap).

If I go the used route for a US laser, what should I watch out for? I know that some of the older models are "unsupported" by Epilog, how concerned should I be about that?

As for software, are there other options than Corel? I thought Adobe could be used as well, but I didn't see any support for it. I don't see myself doing much detailed work, so I don't need anything with tons of bells and whistles just yet.

Any other tips or tricks you can offer would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[James Stokes]

There are faster lasers and there are slower. The chinese lasers are going to be a lot slower than the US lasers. You will have more problems with the chinese lasers.
If you want speed you will have to pay for it. The more power you have the faster you can run the laser. There are high speed galvo lasers that are extremely fast, but they cost.
Epilog supports any of their lasers, older or newer, if they made it they support it. I do not think you can get any better support from any one else.
If you know nothing about lasers I would not really recomend a used laser.

[Rodne Gold]

If the laser is too slow to do your product ,rather look for another way to do what you want to do. You already have a major stumbling block with mainstream stuff why would you want to buy an inferior product and hope it might do better?
If you tell us what you want to accomplish or do ,the ppl that frequent this board might give you alternatives or even a way to speed it all up so you can use a laser to produce.

[Dee Gallo]

Hi Dean,

I bought a used Epilog Eclipse (yes, a dinosaur from 1993) and have been running it for over 3 years. It had a new bulb in 1998 which just burned out... so now that tech support and parts are not available, I am going to buy a new Mini. Is it worth $3000 to try to have the bulb repaired and only warranteed for 6 months? I don't think so. I have gotten WAY more out of this machine than I paid for it, and I would buy another used machine if one was available, but I need a laser NOW, so I'll buy new.

As a backup, I bought a cheapo Chinese laser. I am afraid to fire it up, though, after looking at the CD that came with it. This is a Rube Goldberg contraption, with a fish aquarium pump you put in a bucket of ice water to cool the bulb. On the instructional CD they show you how to set it up and test it, with the top open, bypassing the safety things, and setting fire to little pieces of cardboard. I'm waiting til summer to take it outside to test it.

Regarding software: I just retired from teaching computer graphics and the only way to learn a program is to use it, and spend a good amount of time playing with the features. Creating line art with CorelDraw is simple if you focus on learning to control the line drawing tool and the bezier line tool. Import a jpeg or scan, lock it, draw over the outlines you need, convert to curves and clean them up. Unlock and delete your scan. Forget the "trace" tool, it makes too many shapes. I always used to start my total newbie students with drawing a snowman, with top hat, with sticks for arms and a striped scarf. This makes you learn all of the important tools and how to combine them in one drawing, including grouping sections so they can be moved and resized easily.

Hope some of this helped you, dee

[Mike Null]

Dean

We have three (or more?) members who sell used lasers.

Roy Brewer
Rob Bosworth
Mike Mackenzie

All are reputable and helpful. I would use the member list and pm them for more info.

[Dean H Smith]

Thanks for the info, I'll have to check them out.


There are faster lasers and there are slower. The chinese lasers are going to be a lot slower than the
US lasers. You will have more problems with the chinese lasers.
Well, I have no doubt that I will have more problems with a Chinese laser (you get what you pay for), but the price point is tempting (I'm willing to tinker to save thousands). We would have to sell less than 50 units of the game board sets, something our market research tells us we could do in 2 conventions (but no plan survives the first encounter). The lower price would also mean it could be 'me' instead of 'we' (I'm the one spearheading the project anyway).


If you want speed you will have to pay for it. The more power you have the faster you can run the laser. There are high speed galvo lasers that are extremely fast, but they cost.
I do want speed, but if a $10,000+ laser is going to take 12 minutes to do the engraving our business plan breaks down. That means we have to sell direct to the public instead of using a distributor, but it also means that speed is less of a concern.


Epilog supports any of their lasers, older or newer, if they made it they support it. I do not think you can get any better support from any one else.
Epilog not supporting older models actually came from the semi-local Epilog salesman (who had access to a used laser in my price range but didn't recommend it due to the age of the machine).


If you know nothing about lasers I would not really recomend a used laser.
Well, at this point the price of a new US laser is out, but a new Chinese laser...


If the laser is too slow to do your product ,rather look for another way to do what you want to do.
We have explored using a normal saw to do the engraving, but see issues with the width of the cut (blades being too wide) and the depth of the cut (weakens the acrylic leading to possible breakage if dropped).

We also looked into screen-printing, but ran into issues with printing on the edge of the acrylic. We also had concerns over the durability of this option.

If anyone has other options, let me know...


You already have a major stumbling block with mainstream stuff why would you want to buy an inferior product and hope it might do better?
I'm looking for opinions on how inferior the option is. If I was just hoping it would do better, I would already have spent the $1650. ;)


If you tell us what you want to accomplish or do ,the ppl that frequent this board might give you alternatives or even a way to speed it all up so you can use a laser to produce.
It's pretty basic actually, I want to engrave lines (2-3 mm width) in acrylic. That's it, engraving a grid in the plastic (a square grid to start, a hex grid for later products). I'm surprised that we have run into as many roadblocks as we have.


I bought a used Epilog Eclipse (yes, a dinosaur from 1993) and have been running it for over 3 years. It had a new bulb in 1998 which just burned out... so now that tech support and parts are not available, I am going to buy a new Mini.
Did you buy it from an Epilog distributor or from another source?


...I would buy another used machine if one was available, but I need a laser NOW, so I'll buy new.
I have some time since the larger conventions don't come up for a few months, but I would like to get some experience with the laser before that point.


As a backup, I bought a cheapo Chinese laser. I am afraid to fire it up...
This is a Rube Goldberg contraption...
I'm waiting til summer to take it outside to test it.
This is EXACTLY the info I was looking for, I just wish you had used it already so I could get some first hand info about the process.


Regarding software: I just retired from teaching computer graphics and the only way to learn a program is to use it, and spend a good amount of time playing with the features...
I have no doubt, I'm more interested in what is out there for programs.


Hope some of this helped you, dee
Yes, thank you. Thanks to everybody.

(edit/non-edit: sorry about the odd quotes, I couldn't fix it with an edit...)

[Dan Hintz]

It's pretty basic actually, I want to engrave lines (2-3 mm width) in acrylic. That's it, engraving a grid in the plastic (a square grid to start, a hex grid for later products). I'm surprised that we have run into as many roadblocks as we have.

This could very easily be done with a CNC router and extremely fast (think in terms of "boards per minute" rather than "minutes per board"). Purchasing a laser for this is not only overkill, it's a solution looking for a problem.

[Dean H Smith]

The CNC router was an option early on, but we were pointed in the laser cutter direction by multiple sources and haven't considered it since. Admittedly one of the early partners had experience with a laser and influenced our direction, but our acrylic distributor said that a laser was the way to go and none of the machine shops we went to when we looked at outsourcing the project suggested it either.

What sort of CNC router should I be looking for? Will a wood one work for my application? I don't recall much of a price difference between CNCs and a laser, but that may be because I was looking at metal CNC routers.

[Scott Shepherd]

Also sounds like they rastered the grid lines. You could probably put a 4.0 lens in, take it out of focus, and vector mark the lines in 1 minute instead of 12.

Just a thought. If you'd like me to try it (without the 4.0 lens) and time it or show you the results, PM me and we'll work out the details. I'll gladly sign anything I need to as to protect your concept. In fact, you can draw something completely different, with the same number of lines for all I care.

[Todd Schwartz]

Dean - would be curious if you have gotten a second opinion/test to better determine the time it takes to laser engrave. Chances are there are tweaks that can be made to the design and settings to speed things up. Could you share the file or a representative sample of the file - if interested you can PM me.

Todd

[Dean H Smith]

The Epilog salesman tried different approaches and even said he would continue to work on it, but no luck.

There's no need for NDAs or going through PM, it's a simple 8" x 8" grid (9 lines across for the edges). Plenty of companies make similar products...

http://dragonsnack.com/DDM/gametile.jpg

[Scott Shepherd]

Dean, I just ran that pattern. I didn't cut out the square, but just ran the grid. 25 seconds. Like I said earlier, they need to be vector marking, not rastering. If the sales people don't know that, then you need to move on to the next rep.

If you'd like a video clip of it, I can provide one. I ran it .100 out of focus with a 2.0 lens and it gave me a .8mm wide mark, so I'm sure the 4.0 lens out of focus would be much better. Worse case, put 2 lines next to each other and have it done in 50 seconds.

If you have any questions about specifics, PM me and we'll chat.

[Gary Hair]

The Epilog salesman tried different approaches and even said he would continue to work on it, but no luck.

There's no need for NDAs or going through PM, it's a simple 8" x 8" grid (9 lines across for the edges). Plenty of companies make similar products...

http://dragonsnack.com/DDM/gametile.jpg

Dean,
I just ran that job on my laser and it took just over two minutes - I'd find a new rep if I were you.

Given your "simple" project, I would highly recommend outsourcing the laser work. I am sure that you would find quite a few people on this site, myself included, that would be able to turn those out in the hundreds. The best thing about outsourcing is that you don't have ANY of the cost or problems associated with buying your own laser.

Let me know if you want to discuss this further, I'd be happy to create a prototype for you.

Gary

edit: that time was for vectoring the lines AND cutting the piece, not just vectoring the grid lines... Add a little bit to put your logo, website and phone number - gotta have that, right?

[Scott Shepherd]

Here's a video clip- got it down to 17 seconds on the grid lines.

http://www.customengravingandsigns.com/photos/Checkers001.wmv

Forgive me showing it already going over existing lines, but I ran it on a piece of scrap, then I sped it up and ran it again. It's a 700K video file (not very big), and it's a .wmv file (Windows Movie maker created).

[Dean H Smith]

We did run some vector lines, but none gave us the same results as the actual engraving. That is how fast I expected the laser to be though.

I would be fine with farming the work out, we just didn't get any viable quotes when we put it out for bid locally.

Is there a list of members that take on work? Or would that be pretty much everybody?

[Scott Shepherd]

Dean, there's also another way if you didn't get the results you wanted with vector lines. Not sure what the quality issue was. Do yourself a favor and get another demo by someone else.

If you had to have it rastered, that would be quick too. I would never raster the entire image, I would raster the 8 horizontal lines and then rotate it and run it again. Total time including the rotation would probably be about a minute to do the lines.

I'll give it a go when I get a chance and let you know.

[Scott Challoner]

Dean

If you do have to raster, I would do it in two passes. The verticle lines are what is going to slow you down. I just ran 2mm horizontal lines 8 inches long and 8 inches apart at 300dpi in 47 seconds. Now rotate it 90 degrees and run it again. The whole process can be done under two minutes. You can have two files loaded so you can cut the outline on the first or second pass.
I just tried it at 250dpi and it was 40 seconds. You can play with the dpi to give you the right balance between speed and the quality of the line you want.

[Peck Sidara]

Dean,

The Epilog representative you met with is none other than our Jeff Aichinger, Class Act Engraving. Jeff is our authorized distributor in upstate NY. There's really nothing semi-local about him. Very professional, knowledgeable and has been one of our reps for quite some time.

I believe you'll find other laser mfg'ers cycle times to be very similar. There have been some great suggestions posted:

From what I understand, you weren't too happy with vector cut line thickness and lack of contrast.I like the idea of raster engraving the horizontal lines, rotate the object and repeat the same job. The reason why it's taking so long is your engraving in small steps from the top-down or down-up. There's alot of wasted time and space there.

Lastly, it's possible Jeff's demo was a lower wattage unit (35Watts perhaps) and if the depth you require isn't obainable running at 100% speed at 100% power, he could have had to slow the machine down. A higher wattage laser tube will likely reduce the cycle time.

If we're looking at lower cost systems, raster engraving, x-depth then your best bet is to apply one of posted suggestions to your application.

Call me at 888.437.4564 ext. 236 if you'd like to discuss additional testing on a particular model.

[Dean H Smith]

Yes, it was Jeff and he was completely professional. I say semi-local since he's about 40 miles from me, but I guess that is relatively local for a laser salesman.

Thanks to everyone for the additional options and suggestions to check out. I'm sure I'll have some more questions after checking them all out.