I've read all the negative coverage on this forum of FSL, so I thought I'd offer up my experience with them so far to give a little balance. I neither represent FSL or have any ties to them, so please spare the bad mouthing for another thread.
I did all the research here and elsewhere, and given my budget of both money and time, settled on the FSL 20x12 5th gen. I didn't have the time to deal with all that is involved in importing from China/ebay or building a Buildlog 2.x, and I had enough in my budget to pay for decent software and reasonably local support. Can't afford Epilog/Universal/Trotec... someday maybe. So that left FSL/Hurricane etc. Given all the bad press on this forum and others it was a difficult decision. But I just couldn't find anything else that made sense in my price range. I hate their heavily moderated forum and their censorship of bad press. But, given my many experiences with the vocal minority on other forums and other large purchases like this (DJI multirotors for example on RCGroups)... I decided to take temper the negative press with the thousands they've sold with no complaints and the plunge to find out for myself.
I first saw FSL due to their kickstarter campaign, but didn't purchase one until early Feb this year. The lead time was 4 weeks until I got the call to come pick it up in Vegas. I live just south of Salt Lake City so I figured I'd spare myself the risk of the laser being damaged in shipping and drive 5.5 hours to pick it up myself. They were very accommodating and set up a time with me when someone would be available to give me a quick tour and a demo of the laser. The warehouse wasn't the neatest place I've ever seen and their assembly line sure wasn't how I'd do it, but after talking to a couple of the engineers and assembly people and getting a good demo, I was at least comforted that they were putting together a decent machine that was tested and well made. There was no shadiness or hiding of anything, they let me walk into their warehouse and talk to anyone and see the whole setup. That surprised me. After all of my questions were answered they loaded it into my car and home I went.
But to summarize... I have had to contact support once regarding a question about the beam combiner. My email was answered in 40 minutes, my phone call the following morning. Given this isn't a "my laser doesn't work" and/or "this is broken" type call, so I have yet to see how that will be handled, but so far so good. For a product that is labeled as "hobby" and not a professional level of price or product, this is about the level of support I'd expect. There are a few other very minor glitchy issues but nothing major and nothing that's stopped me from using the laser how I see fit.
Again, if you've had a bad experience with them, I'm sorry. I can see with their lack of internal organization how things could go bad quickly, and they certainly aren't the most customer support oriented organization in the world. Big picture wise I can now see how they operate. I'll keep this thread updated with any further support experiences.
As for the laser... It works well and works as expected. The software is much better than I anticipated and works well in Parallels running Win 7 on a Mac and printing from Adobe Illustrator. I've yet to ramp up to mass production of anything but am impressed so far. I'm a laser newb and am learning as I go, so again, I'll update this thread with any future issues. Thanks for your consideration.
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