Laserpro C180

[Zac Altman]

Anyone got any thoughts on the Laserpro C180? I have looked around, but there are no comments or reviews on this system.

I know Robert Ray bought one a little while ago. Robert, what do you think of it? Any reason you went for Laserpro over other manufacturers?

[bruno vanhenis]

there is indead little to find about Laserpro. I think they have good products. I have been checking out the spirit and a big advantag is the "hand center" method. has anybody experience with laserpro?

[Robert Ray]

I am very happy with my Laserpro C180. It cuts great. My own hands on experience is with the Laserpro Venus 12watt and 35 watt, 45 watt Epilog Mini 24, Epilog 24TT 40 watt, and Versalaser VLS2.3 25 watt, and the Laserpro C180.


The 30 watt C180 is much better than the models above The drivers are so, so much better. The cuts are way cleaner. You can vector cut very small parts at 100% speed without any wiggly lines. It's a very well built and stable system. My only complaint is the downdraft exhaust is not as stron as my Venus downdraft exhaust, but it's still good enough. Also I would have liked a built in network card, but ended up buying a $30 printserver to do the same thing... put this printer on my network.

I recommended this laser to 2 others this year, and they are both extremely happy, with one guy dumping his 45 watt Mini 24 Tuning Fork model for the 30 watt C180, and almost doubling his throughput due to the stable mechanism allowing 100% speed cutting.

Lasers are a lot like cars in that people have brand loyalty. I'm not a brand loyal guy. I look for the features, and I want performance. I want throughput. The C180 delivered! ;)


-Robert

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

All
I have owned a GCC explorer 50 watts for over three years. No major problems.
Just wanted to add that the latest driver has a function called four point center.
This is extremely helpful when engraving an irregular shaped object. You just have to move the head to four different points on the object, pressing enter each time. The machine calculates the exact center.
Just imagine the time saved because of this function and the accuracy of the center.
abdul

[Ben Levesque]

there is indead little to find about Laserpro. I think they have good products. I have been checking out the spirit and a big advantag is the "hand center" method. has anybody experience with laserpro?

Don't mistake the Laserpro Spirtit with the LaserPro C180, because the Spirit is basically the same as an Epilog Mini, They both have the Whiplash effect if you go too fast. The LaserPro C180 is a complitelly different type of machine, robust enought for doing fast 90 deg turns at 0.006" of distance and at full speed.

Ben

[Robert Ray]

Don't mistake the Laserpro Spirtit with the LaserPro C180, because the Spirit is basically the same as an Epilog Mini, They both have the Whiplash effect if you go too fast. The LaserPro C180 is a complitelly different type of machine, robust enought for doing fast 90 deg turns at 0.006" of distance and at full speed.

Ben


That's the main reason I purchased the C180, is the fast square cornering. I am using it for vector cutting Z Scale models, so I needed a stiff mechanism. Also a driver that has true PPI control. With the true PPI, as the XY mechanism slows down to change direction, the pulses slow accordingly, meaning the corner cuts are very square.

The other systems I looked at had a problem where they would start to oscillate when cutting at full or even half speed, and the tiny squares and rectangles looked like hysterisis symbols instead of rectangles. Like someone thumped a tuning fork!

Many engraver companies are using hardened metal bearings for the head slide, selling on how they last, but the Laserpro bearings are a plastic material that are supposed to last about a year. Those plastic bearings have a dampening effect that for my application, is needed. My Venus lasers are almost 6 years old and those plastic bearings have never needed to be replaced, but the table is 12" where the C180 is 18".

If you are mostly going to be raster engraving, then the other systems will suit just fine, as the tuning fork effect is not noticable when engraving in just one axis back and forth, it's those small Y jogs that set the engravers off into oscillations.

-Robert