Which Chinese Laser To Buy ???

[Phill Barnes]

Hi Guys
This is my first post on this site so I have to say Hi to all from Queensland Australia.
I have been a self employed Sign Maker for many years now. When I started my business, I purchased a GCC Mercury 25 watt with all the options. I loved this machine but at the time when the word laser was mentioned to prospective customers, the word RADIATION would pop up and they would run a mile. Other than that, they could not see my vision of how unique a product I could make them with my machine to give something that no one else stocked. I am mainly referring to the Scrapbook market but not only. Needless to say, I was getting no work for my laser apart from a few acrylic jobs. I was designing bits and pieces as samples but at the end of the day, I had a $32000 shop decoration. So I sold it on for a massive loss of coarse and then all those who ran scared said, "Hey Phill, about that laser. I would like.....". This was when lasered scapbook parts started to flood through the scapbook world. Now with a new marketing vision, I want to purchase a nother laser and have been searching the Chinese market via the internet. I like the Bodor and Golden Laser machines for their specs. I realise that most of these machines use generic hardware so they should be the same ish but some advertise better specs than other. I want a good machine but I want it cheap also.
I will need
80-100 watt
600x900 mm or 1200x900 mm cutting area
electric rise and fall with vector honeycomb table
and will most likely choose a host of other little options like auto focus, red dot, rotary unit, etc.

Who can recommend a particular company to deal with and also any companies not to deal with. I started to like York laser and SignTech products, but then I started hearing bad things about service once paid and poor reliability.

I would be greatfull to hear of anyones experiences with these companies and thank you all in advance.

Phill Barnes
CCE

[matthew knott]

Shenui seems to be favourite on here, lots of posts on here about them! Havent brought myself but it's who I would look at first! Rodne is your man, look he's excellent posts out, he took the time to fly out and cheek the company out and report all he's findings! Look at the top thread on shenui Chinese lasers! Sure others on here will be along with better knowledge than me but It's a start!

[Bruce Boone]

I am still waiting on a quote from Golden Laser for a very powerful 650 watt YAG laser in a setup much like the one you are looking at. It's been about a week now. I am very interested due to their specs on a machine that I'm having a very hard time sourcing elsewhere. It seems to be very rare to get high power, rotary axis capability, and an XY travel of more than 8" x 8" for less than low to mid six digits from other potential suppliers. One thing that concerns me is that the laser is spec'ed for 380 volts, whereas I only have 220 volts single or 3 phase, so I need to find out if the machine has a transformer that can be retapped or how that would work.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone that has bought from them also.

[Nick Foley]

Even if the machine can't be rewired, and they can't provide a transformer with it... you should be able to score the appropriate transformer used and locally for $100-300. Setting up a robot recently, we got the appropriate 220 to 480 15KVA transformer for about $150 at a nearby industrial supply yard.

[Bruce Boone]

I figured that might be the case, but I didn't know if that's how it's normally done. My Mazak CNC lathe has different voltage taps on an internal transformer, so that makes it easy for them. I also don't know what if any the difference in the 50 and 60 Hertz frequencies would make. Looking at getting a Chinese laser is definitely out of my comfort zone, but they both look to produce some good stuff. It's a matter of assembling parts made by others into an intelligent system. I imagine there will be some major learning curve with foreign written software, but what new system wouldn't have that? I had a US company quote a custom laser and some of the extras seemed to really be overpriced: $950 for a limit switch, $9500 for a vision system, adding a full 4th axis control at about $20K, when it could simply use a 3rd axis like on a Universal laser and sense whether the rotary is plugged in or not. I'm sure the parts are quality stuff, but you start to feel a bit taken when all that stuff adds up so high. The real kicker was the table travel. In the US made setup I had quoted, they used XY stages instead of a gantry setup and only had an 8" travel. If I'm going to be paying that much for a laser, I would want a bit more flexibility than that. Any variation from their normal setup would get extremely costly, effectively removing them from contention.

[Phill Barnes]

Does anyone have any experience with the Bodor BCL-690N 80 watt reci laser cutter. So far their prices are seem to be pretty low $3670 CIF to Brisbane Australia with red dot, honeycomb + $1000 for electric up and down with auto focus probe, rotary device, 3 x extra mirrors, 1 x extra focus lens an cw5000 cooling system.
Anyone have better quotes than this?

Phill

[Rodne Gold]

it really doesn't matter much what make you buy , most use the same components , it's how they put it together that counts.
In China ,you get what you pay for , if an item is 5 dollah and you get the same item for 3 dollah , you got to know that there were some compromises.
Your price with the extra's is in line with most other lasers in that size/power config , you will need more spares as well and don't be fooled by the shipping , do NOT use their shippers , appoint a shipper/forwarder in aussie to handle it , add at LEAST $500-700 on the price for shipping door to door.
Your biggest angst will come from paying up front to a co you don't know from a bar of soap while they "build" your laser.. I had no such worries as I used a co I have been to etc.

[Phill Barnes]

Thanks Rodne
I have sent an email to Shenhui requesting some prices but have heard nothing back as yet but I will give them a couple more days before I follow them up. I will also do some digging into Bodor's history and check out some shipping alternatives.
I do everything in Corel Draw and am hoping that these chinese machines with Lasercut 5.3 work as easy as they say they do from Corel. I found the GCC print driver a breeze to learn. How would you compare these systems?

Phill

[Bruce Boone]

I think I have made a change in my decision making making on my burning laser. After getting responses that were out to lunch from the two Chinese companies, and not having a very good comfort factor about ordering something so expensive from overseas that's designed for a different power supply and all the potential shipping issues, I think I will build it myself here. I will either use my Tormach Milll, which is a great machine, but is currently not being used as I also have a full sized machining center, or make a new machine from scratch based on the Sherline 4th axis table top mill. I will have the president of Micro Kinetics over tomorrow to discuss the options. I could possibly even put a Mikro Kinetics mill inside my current laser cabinet and use the YAG laser's existing 4th axis and exhaust system. I would buy the raw 400 watt fiber laser unit from SPI and do the "stuff" to make it a rotary or XY cutting system. It would save around $100K in the process over an engineered solution from the US and if I used the Tormach, I would have better travel and have all the working axes already. It would just require the addition of a full enclosure to keep the beam from being able to get out. I have read where people can use the Mach 3 control to run a laser. The laser people also said that with frequency modulation, I would be able to do either full burns or engraving, which would be ideal. There would be little need to share a cabinet with the YAG laser if that were the case. It would be good to use the same rotary axis if only one laser could burn and only the other could deep engrave, but if the new laser could do both, I would also get the advantage of being able to do XY flat work up to around 20" x 10" or so if it used the Tormach CNC frame. I've been agonizing over this decision for years, and I finally have a solution that might workable.

[Rodne Gold]

Bruce , I saw the 650W yag systems in operation , mostly used in flat plate machining centre type applications where the head was static and the plate moved , I saw one cutting thru 8mm steel at Shenui , didnt look like it was fine enough for the delicate work you do tho ? but maybe that was the motion system?
Pricing for a system was around US$ 50k as far as I remember. I will check at work , I think I got a quote at one time from Frank Mu at Golden laser..not on my home machine.

Phil
The GCC driver is wonderful , the RDcam/laserworks/lasercut driver is actually a lot more potent in terms of what you can do re positioning and controlling the cut/engraving but is nowhere near as good with its Corel interface , it basically exports the Corel drawing out to the laser driver as an Ai/Plt/whatever file , the issue is that the GCC driver is a what you see is what you get type thing and the others do sometimes require workarounds to get the same WYSIWYG results. Nothing to be scared of and a small "price" to pay. My relatively unskilled lowish level staff have no problems running/programming my Gcc's and my chinese machines.
I would suggest getting hold of Shenui via skype , try get hold of Blanca Yan her skype name is blanca610616. You can mail her at yanblanca@yahoo.com

[Bruce Boone]

Golden Laser did spec out a machine much closer to what I was looking for tonight. They had originally showed a movie of one with about a 15 foot table and a huge rotary axis that looked like a large lathe standing outside the laser table. It was cutting about an 8 foot long pipe. Way overkill for what I'm looking for. They have an enclosed 400 x 600 model with a 650 watt YAG available. I think the cut on something thin, like 2mm would be fine and get quite messy as the thickness goes up. I wouldn't mind being able to cut my tension set rings on it. These are the type that stick up to hold a stone. They can get around 5mm tall or so at that point. I don't know if their YAGs can be pulsed to do some engraving as well as cutting. That seems to be one advantage of the fiber is the fine beam kerf (10um to 50um) and the fact that it could be pulsed. That's assuming I can get the Mach 3 control to do that. A disadvantage of the fiber is that it would use g-code rather than a cad file, so won't be as easy to run new designs. It's not a huge difference though, in that I'm sure the Chinese software would have some serious learning curve as well.I did ask for a quote on the latest offering from Golden Laser. If its still around $50k, it would be worth persuing. The other fiber laser alone is about $80k, and I would need to add a cutting head, and convert my machine over, with air solenoids, interlocks, full enclosure and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. It has the advantage of having laser experts in this country that have actually done test cuts for me, so I know for certain the laser itself can do a nice cut on 2mm thick rings. The trick would be running it without having the $350k machine they ran it on.

[matthew knott]

Im NOT recommending this but might be of interest
http://www.ebay.com/itm/B26173-ELECT...item53eb68dcb2
Its been for sale forever and has quite a few interesting parts "aerotech xy stages" and a 500watt yag laser. Just the interlocked enclosure would have cost a fortune back in the day, you would need to add a cutting nozzel and lens and who knows if the laser works as surport for it is going to be patchy at best but at 19k its cheap, that would have been a 300k plus system new and i bet they would take a offer on it. BIG BIG gamble with a risk of getting 19k's worth of scrap but i do know people that worked on them (still in the states) so it might be posible to get it running again. More food for thought Bruce than anything

[Bruce Boone]

Wow. Thanks Matthew. I will definitely give that some thought. Having someone nearby who really understands the ins and outs of motion control really helps me feel better about such a prospect. Those darn stages alone are probably about that new. They are accurate to millionths of an inch or some such thing.

[matthew knott]

Think they would be more than that, shame it hasnt got the rotary or powerd z but it can easily be added. The main problem is getting the laser going (and keeping) they where pretty relaible in the feild but getting power supplies (if it goes bang) is almost imposible, electrox dont really make or surport it anymore but they do have some spares still. I know a the guy that designed the cutting head and he does the odd private job so that would not be an issue, But as i say its a BIG gamble, Cavet emptor as they say in Rome.

Wow. Thanks Matthew. I will definitely give that some thought. Having someone nearby who really understands the ins and outs of motion control really helps me feel better about such a prospect. Those darn stages alone are probably about that new. They are accurate to millionths of an inch or some such thing.

[Bruce Boone]

I just got a quote from Golden Laser at $34,500 plus $800 for the rotary. That's fairly awesome. Darn, just when I thought things would be more simple, I have a few good options I need to sort through. They would have a fully engineered solution that should work right out of the box. It is YAG technology, so will need a flash lamp backup and other spare parts, but it looks like they have a good machine. This machine does have cutting head auto sensing, which is a fairly big deal that the fiber laser wouldn't have. That would allow the cutter to follow strange shapes, like following a square tube as it's rotated, or a tension set ring that has a hump on one side.

In looking further into the used machine that Matthew found, I would likely gamble on that if I had more room and more power available. I'm pretty tight on space and can't do unlimited power. The chiller looks like it would be very power hungry, and they don't really give good specs on that stuff. It's also 12 years old and not being used to make money now. You wonder why that is. One plus for the fiber system is that there's no additional footprint; it is in a machine that I have sitting on the floor already. It's drawback is having to create a system that all works together. A plus for the YAG is the large 400 x 600mm table travel and the pre engineered unit that should work already.

This is hard to do!