What's your idea of the perfect laser engraver?

[Robert Ray]

I am always looking over the features and specs of new laser engravers, looking for the perfect laser. I have a list of desired features I'll share.

1) Place and engrave red dot pointer.

2) 100 watts of air cooled power.

3) .001" cutting kerf or finer with a 1/32" or better depth of focus.

4) 24" or wider table with feed through doors.

5) internal light to illuminate work

6) Focus lens protected inside air assist nozzle assembly

7) Solinoid activated air assist with the type of valve that the air can be toggled from nozzle to exhaust, so moisture can't build up from compressing the air.

8) Soilinoid controlled dust sweepback that toggles as above.

9) Encoder equipt servo motors instead of stepper motors for motion.

10) Laser reflected auto focus instead of mechanical plunger autofocus.

11) Internal software for alignments, calibrations, and tests, including a 3 point autofocus table leveling script.

12) Quick change electronics components and laser head behind an easy access cover.

13) Electronics and laser compartments isolated from dust entry.

14) Flat work area cover with gas piston assisted hinges, that is sized such that a replacement can be cut on the machine itself in case it breaks or is scratched up.

15) Software files included for cutting spare parts like the lid, home flags, lens cover shrouds, etc.

What is your list of feature features for the perfect engraver?

[Scott Shepherd]

36-24-34 :D That's what my perfect laser engraver would look like ;)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Kenneth Hertzog]

one that work each and every time and does exactly what you want it to do with out error. never needs any parts or repair and everything I want to put into it will fit.

what means the most to me is AMERICAN tech support
and when I call someone they can speak and understand english.

ken

[Joe Pelonio]

one that work each and every time and does exactly what you want it to do with out error. never needs any parts or repair and everything I want to put into it will fit.

what means the most to me is AMERICAN tech support
and when I call someone they can speak and understand english.

ken
I agree on the support, but I also do understand that anything with moving parts is going to have parts wear out eventually. Kenneth, was your tongue in your cheek when you wrote that?

I'd be happy if the parts would last at least 5 years under heavy use. But then they haven't managed to do that with cars yet and they have been working on it for over 100 years.

[Kenneth Hertzog]

Joe

Robert wrote about the PERFECT laser
My idea of a perfect laser is listed.
You can bet I know better:)
I didn't have mine a month and the off/on switch went bad.:o
It was really nice to call colorado and have them send the parts out.

And Joe if cars lasted as long as we wanted them to they would never
sell another new one. Being a certified state insp machanic you would be
suprised what i've seen wore out.

ken

[Tom Winters]

What is the perfect laser system?

This question has been a hot topic between my business partner, Dean Novakowski, and I. The debate still pushes forward. We are in complete agreement on what we should do to our machines using the resources we have available.

The problem we face is where to start? We are a smaller sized company that can potentially have a huge outreach in the market. We do have resources that are not easily obtained by anyone. The meaning behind that comment is that we can add a lot more to our machines than what will be listed in this post .

Our machines are imported from China. Yes, they are CHINESE! NO, this does not mean they are junk. I really get sick from reading posts about how terrible chinese machines are. Quality is only an issue when you by pass steps. If there are machines out there not working, made in china, and replacement parts and proper technical support can not be found then a step was missed when purchasing. That topic will be left alone. That is not my dispute.

So we have chinese machines, and a small sized budget. Even if 90% of forum readers do not agree with the quality topic, the majority should agree with me in that no matter how good a machine is, there is always room for improvement. We have already pushed for the development of:

100 watt and 120 watt CO2 Glass Tubes (we now have them)

RF Units up to 100 watts (we now have them)

NEW Software (we are wrapping up the devolopment of a driver system with Link Motion)

With our small budget, should we:

A.) Focus on the development of Sealed CO2 glass tubes that have 10,000 hrs and will only force us to raise our prices at a slight incline. (Including RF units with wattages up to 700 watts)
B.) Push for servo motors to be released with our machines sooner rather than later
C.) Have the auto-focus come stock with our machines and get rid of the focus tool
D.) Besides for the focusing, adapt more user friendly ways of running graphics, operating at different parameters, and performing daily/weekly/monthly maintenance checks
E.) Develop more sturdy honeycomb vector tables
F.) Forget about the above mentioned for now and focus on bringing these machines into our inventory and not make customers wait 30 - 45 days

Dean, our current customers, our future customers, and myself would appreciate feed back. The question, "What's your idea of the perfect laser engraver" is now asked by me. I want to provide someone their dream machine, but I will be honest in saying that we are still aways away from that . I want to thank you in advance. I hope this message does not offend anyone, for I have no hidden motives. There are many professionals on here that have been doing this longer than Dean or I. Your thoughts are highly valued.

[Scott Shepherd]

Interesting that so many of the "perfect system" options are already on a lot of machines, yet the one thing missing from the lists is price.

You can already get most of those options, but you can't get them for $3000.

[Stephen Beckham]

Tom - I'd leave the auto focus off... I took my plunger off several months ago and have been a lot better off. What I would like in lieu of would be the z coordinate up on the screen while in focus mode. I sent this suggestion to Epilog when they added the x/y coordinates (no word back yet). The autofocus was nice when I was new - but now it's a nuisance. Plus - when you do a run of 30 items exactly the same, I don't need it to focus 30 times...

Anyway - like everyone else - I use a lot of items like plaques, plates or glass - also plastics from Romark etc... if I knew the z coordinate, it would become second nature to move to a z setting for 1/16 plastic or another z setting for 3/4 wood plaque etc... No tools involved.

With that in mind - why can I use a focus setting in the driver. Set the speed/power and z setting for items. Yea.... I know naysayers - I would still have to focus from time to time. Heck I do it every time right now. But I'll use the same two as examples 1/16" plastic or 3/4" plaques - if I knew the setting for z - I could push it to the laser, no plungers, no focus tools etc...

[Stephen Beckham]

Another thing I'd like to have on my Epilog is that darned rotator - 'rotated' - it would make the bats no problem if I could stick them out the front door. They made the mini where it's not possible to stick it out the side - even if you cut holes... So my rotator is limited to items less than 18" inches on a 24" bed...

So - I guess this post would be about better pass through capability.

[Tom Winters]

Thank you Steve. The auto focus issue is always brought up to us. Most big name machines in the United Stated have this feature included in all of their machines. Many think that this is must because they do not realize that the time involved in manually putting a laser beam in focus and automatically putting a beam in focus take the same amount of time. Thank you for shedding a different pro vs. con upon me that I did not realize about auto. focus trying to focus per item.

[Jack Harper]

Interesting that so many of the "perfect system" options are already on a lot of machines, yet the one thing missing from the lists is price.

You can already get most of those options, but you can't get them for $3000.

Scott,

Lower price sounds good, however, think of the consequence of lower prices. If machines become equivalent to nice printer prices, everyone will have them and we won't have the business. While price is sometimes hard to swallow, it is a barrier to entry for competition. I myself considered this heavily in deciding my choice of laser. I knew that if I went the distance on a more unique machine, capable of things other lower priced machines could do, I could set my self apart from in the field of competition.

[Richard Rumancik]

Tom - I'd leave the auto focus off... I took my plunger off several months ago and have been a lot better off. What I would like in lieu of would be the z coordinate up on the screen while in focus mode. I sent this suggestion to Epilog when they added the x/y coordinates (no word back yet). The autofocus was nice when I was new - but now it's a nuisance. Plus - when you do a run of 30 items exactly the same, I don't need it to focus 30 times...

Well, personally, I like the idea of optical autofocus, and yes, I stopped using the mechanical autofocus on mine as well. There was another thread that touched on this. With optical autofocus I could zero on the surface and then have the digital readout show the deviation. With higher quality plaques from the same batch, you might get away with focusing once. If you are engraving items such as knives or wood novelties you will see a lot of variation, especially with imported items. If I load 10 knives with wooden handles I often find 5 different thicknesses. With a 1.5" FL lens you don't have very much depth of field so you lose quality if you don't pay attention to focus. It would be nice to have a very fast optical focus, as well as on-the-fly re-focusing. If I could define focus points or workpiece area in my file then it could "probe" these points first and then create a "topological" map of the work zone and adjust as required.

Or how about if I drag the carriage (and optical autofocus sensor) over the four corners of a workpiece (say a plaque) by hand and it collects data and finds an average for the surface and then sets the focus appropriately.

[Richard Rumancik]

What is your list of feature features for the perfect engraver?

I want to see the control panel show actual speed in inches per second in real time. With inexpensive accelerometers these days it is not out of the question.

Also, I want the laser to do a self-calibration of actual wattage at startup, and display actual watts being delivered from the laser on the control panel during a job. A Synrad power meter costs $250 or so. We need an inexpensive $25 sensor that will allow a quick calibration within 5% so we know what the laser is actually doing during a job.

Quoting speed as a % of maximum, and power as a % of the wattage available (based on when the laser was new, which has a tolerance of maybe -0%/+20%) was fine 20 years ago. We need something better now.

As it is there is no reliable relationship for laser settings between different manufacturers, or even within a manufacturer's line of products.

[Rodne Gold]

1) Combination Galvo and flying head for super fast processing
2) Combo Yag and Co2 for multiple material processing
3) Look ahead optimization that will cut cycle times
4) Skip white space that works
5) Auto alignment
6) Auto power compensation for constant power delivery all over the table
7) Roll and flat processing ability , ie capability to cut materials on rolls
8) Optical registration system so that one can print crtop marks or some other mark and take from another machine to be lasered precisely.
9) Auto gas/air assist so one can have more control of pressures and type of gas used.
10) Sealed optics for low maintenance
11) Variable AF - ie changes with respect to material height during the job
12) 3d interolation and the ability to add axes
13) Easy loading/unloading system for multiple jobs
14) Extra large non volatile job buffer
15) Vacuum table and a decent vector cutting table
16) Fire supression
17) Motorised air assist directability
18) Ability to "tilt" beam (beveled cutting)
19) Variable spot size while doing a single job
20) Variable lens focal length

Oh and it must make coffee and toast in the morning :)

[Mike Null]

A number of the more sophisticated features along with some incredible software are available on this machine from Japan.

http://www.keyence.com/products/barcode/lasermarker/mlz9500/mlz9500.php?id=cce9e4a24111504df6ad6714d95e721a

[Scott Shepherd]

Jack, I didn't mean to imply that I think a lower price machine is the answer. I mentioned it because a lot of the options that are mentioned are already on current production machines. So if the options already exist, then there's no reason to "wish" they were features unless you don't own the machines that have those features. I know I didn't say it very well, but I'm not interested in a cheap, low end machine. You get what you pay for in this business.

Stephen, that's how the ULS systems work now. You have a couple of options. You can manually focus, you can enter a "Z" value in the driver, or you can have it sense the work. Not sure how that part works, I've never used it (or either I'm using it all the time). I agree, the "Z" method is superior to the other methods. Much faster, and you never have to send the program over twice for multiple piece jobs, once with the autofocus and once without it. Plus you can assign different colors different "Z" levels. So you can take it out of focus a little for softer looks and then bring it back into focus to vector cut it.

[Brian Robison]

In the injection molding industry we have rotary and shuttle presses. They are used for insert molding. Half the mold stays on a movable platten and two identical opposite halves either rotate in or slide into the platten to mold the product. While the press is injecting and cooling the plastic, the operator is installing the inserts.

This system would be good for some high production lasering. While the laser is running, the operator could be loading a fixture that is the same as the one in the laser. Laser finishes running, operator has the fixture loaded and pushes two buttons and the lasered parts rotate out, parts to be lasered rotate in. Operator unloads and load up new parts to be lasered......

[Lee DeRaud]

"Quiet" is probably at the top of my list. Then again, I'm using the machine at home for non-commercial work.

But I have to believe there are also a lot of store-front/kiosk applications where the noise of the laser and/or the exhaust system make it impractical or undesireable.

[Scott Shepherd]

My vote - Emergency Stop button. Should be able to press an E-Stop button and stop the machine dead in it's track. No "wait while I finish vectoring this line". Stop should mean stop now, not "Stop when you're finished what you're doing".

[Robert Ray]

1) Combination Galvo and flying head for super fast processing
2) Combo Yag and Co2 for multiple material processing
3) Look ahead optimization that will cut cycle times
4) Skip white space that works
5) Auto alignment
6) Auto power compensation for constant power delivery all over the table
7) Roll and flat processing ability , ie capability to cut materials on rolls
8) Optical registration system so that one can print crtop marks or some other mark and take from another machine to be lasered precisely.
9) Auto gas/air assist so one can have more control of pressures and type of gas used.
10) Sealed optics for low maintenance
11) Variable AF - ie changes with respect to material height during the job
12) 3d interolation and the ability to add axes
13) Easy loading/unloading system for multiple jobs
14) Extra large non volatile job buffer
15) Vacuum table and a decent vector cutting table
16) Fire supression
17) Motorised air assist directability
18) Ability to "tilt" beam (beveled cutting)
19) Variable spot size while doing a single job
20) Variable lens focal length

Oh and it must make coffee and toast in the morning :)



These are some really great features Rodne. I have been looking at a YV04 laser with galvo for cutting metal foils and thin stainless, but a combo machine would be really cool.


Whe I read about some people's feelings about auto focus giving them grief, I did not understand where they were coming from until I remembered my friend's mini 24 autofocusing each time the start button is pressed.

Auto fucos on the Laser Pro machines is the kind many of the Epilog guys want I think. You move the nozzle by hand to the center of your work, and press the auto focus button. It drives the table up to a switch and backs off to the correct focus. I only use it if I change to a different thickness material, and all like sheets of material use the same height.


I guess the Laser Pro auto focus is more of a semi-auto focus, with auto being controlled in the driver like the Epilog does, and manual being stick the focus jig on the lens head then manually drive focus till the jig touches the material.

[Richard Rumancik]

I guess the Laser Pro auto focus is more of a semi-auto focus, with auto being controlled in the driver like the Epilog does, and manual being stick the focus jig on the lens head then manually drive focus till the jig touches the material.

Not sure what you mean when you say the "auto" is controlled by the driver. On mine the driver has no control over focusing. Are you saying newer LaserPro and Epilogs can be commanded to focus through the driver?

Autofocus is fine for some things but there is too much risk of a collision for me. The table rises too high during the autofocus operation in my opinion.

[Rodne Gold]

It isnt controlled by the driver , I assume he means by the front panel on the machine with the AF probe whichs sets it automatically when you press Autofocus button or stick the metal pin type gauge in the hole in the head and do it by eye by raising the table.
I have been using GCC machines for a long time , never had an af crash. the really nice feature of the later GCC's is you can engrave from the centre outwards , so for example you can engrave the centre of a slaver with a raised lip without ever getting near the lip. The AF probes of the GCc machines also can be manually raised out the way , past the lowest point of the head. They alos have AF tuning , IE you can measure using the supplied manual tool and tune the AF to be exactly in synch with it so you know the AF is spot on.

[Bruce Larson]

With my Epilog, if I have multiple pieces I run the first one with auto focus, then run the rest with the auto focus in the driver set to off. this eliminates the focus on every piece.
One caution however, Make SURE the pieces are all the same thickness. Cast acrylic is NOT the same from piece to piece.

[Scott Shepherd]

On the Epilog it is in the driver. It's a check box that you pick that says "Auto-Focus" and if you pick it, the file that's sent contains the routine to autofocus it every time the job is run. So if you have 100 of the same piece and you select that in the driver before hitting the print button, then it'll auto-focus on every single one of them (every cycle through). To have it not do that, you have to either uncheck it and manually focus it, or you have to send the same program over twice, once with the auto-focus on and once without it, and after that first run, you just move to the next program.

I think that's what he meant by it's "driver controlled".

[Richard Rumancik]

. . . I have been using GCC machines for a long time , never had an af crash. the really nice feature of the later GCC's is you can engrave from the centre outwards , so for example you can engrave the centre of a slaver with a raised lip without ever getting near the lip. The AF probes of the GCc machines also can be manually raised out the way , past the lowest point of the head.

Yes, it depends on what you do - I did use it for a long time but eventually I got nervous about using it.

When you raise the probe and lock it up, it sets up for an accident next time you use autofocus, if you forget to bring it back down first. With everything being black in the carriage area it is not immediately obvious that it is up. Also the set screw device holding the probe is not great, so if the probe is not completely tight it can slip also causing an accident. And it you tighten the screw too much it breaks. Ask me how I know.

I also have some special fixtures with hold downs and you always have to be locking the probe up after auto-focus to clear the clamps etc. then remembering to bring it back down before using autofocus again.

Autofocus is fine for flat plaques and flat material that needs no fixtures. But I just found it safer to stay with the probe for my work. I guess I had a few scenerios where it did not work to my satisfaction so I just gave up using it. One accident is one too many.

[Robert Ray]

Yes Scott, that's what I meant by "Driver Controlled", so when my friend had the autofocus checked in his driver, and presses start, it first moves the head out, and focuses on the material, then moves to the starting position and engraves. The next piece of material does the same thing when he hits start.

My Laserpro machines don't have this feature, they just have a manually activated autofocus button, that you use every time you change to a different material thickness.

[Larry Bratton]

one that work each and every time and does exactly what you want it to do with out error. never needs any parts or repair and everything I want to put into it will fit.

what means the most to me is AMERICAN tech support
and when I call someone they can speak and understand english.

ken
Absolutely agreed!

[Darren Null]

1. 12,000W
2. Self-cleaning/sealed unit lens array that you can swap focal lengths automagically
3. Head replaceable with either a plasma torch or one of those stupidly powerful water-cutting things
4. Laser dismounts for either attachment on the car or hand-held (with...well...it'd have to be fuel cell power) for impromptu graffiti on the way to/from the pub. And mugging wouldn't be a problem.
5. 4m square open bed with at least 6 feet of vertical travel
6. Motor-driven roof and automatic targetting for world domination/satellite skeet shooting
7. 50-year automatic catfood dispenser for fluffy white cat just in case I get stopped at the 11th hour
8. Bitchin' sound system
9. 50" plasma screen with twin auxiliary video projectors

...and I want it all built into a bus. Man.