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Thread: Best to cut 1/4” Baltic birch and other woods.

  1. #16
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Rarotonga, Cook Islands
    Posts
    88
    Couldn't agree more Rich - an experienced voice of sanity!!

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Medina Ohio
    Posts
    4,514
    Quote Originally Posted by Rich Harman View Post
    If you will not be making a steady income, go with an 80W Chinese machine with a fat body tube (like Reci) and a Ruida controller*.

    Seven years now and my original 80W Reci is still going strong. The engraving quality is on par with the western machines, but slower. Cutting is just as good as the western machines and just as fast.

    If you've got the money (quite a bit of it), Trotec would be my first choice.

    Another difference between the cheap Chinese machines and the western ones like Epilog and Trotec is that the latter us encoder strips on the axis. That means that the position of the laser head is precisely tracked in real time.

    Cheap machines use steppers with no encoders**, that means that the motors turn "blindly" a certain amount and the laser head is expected to be in the right location via the belts and pulleys. It works and it works very well, but the ultimate precision is a little less than the western machines - which is irrelevant for 99% of users.

    *You would want a Ruida controller so that you can use LightBurn

    **Even the steppers that do have encoders are not much of an improvement (if at all) since the encoder is on the motor itself and does not track the laser head like the western machines do. You will still have the inaccuracies introduced by the belts and pulleys. The encoder strips of the western machines are superior.
    For the kind of work I do with my laser I tried Lightburn and find that it doesn't do anything better then Laserworks. I just use it to cut and I get my files in a DXF format from the companies I work for.

  3. #18
    I have two Boss Lasers, a 20x16 60 watt and a 24x36 -100 watt machine . They have been amazing machines so far. The 100 watt will cut 1 1/4 thick pine with a 4” lens, not that I do this all the time , but it will do if needed. The support from Boss has been top notch. I have only needed them for basic questions but they are quick to respond .

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Location
    Spingfield, MO.
    Posts
    59
    Sorry for showing my ignorance with my questions, and thank you for the replies. I do not know why I asked so stupid a question.

  5. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Edward Henry View Post
    Sorry for showing my ignorance with my questions, and thank you for the replies. I do not know why I asked so stupid a question.

    yikes almost a year to get back here LOL
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