Hi there,

I was hoping to get some other users experiences on working with Trotec in general, and their service experience within Australia.

A bit of background (obviously a new user):

Prior to purchasing a Trotec SP500(120W), we had run a Thunderlaser Mars 90 which we used for about 2 years before upgrading to the Trotec. Although we operate commercial 3D printers (Stratasys), it was our first experience with operating a lasercutter and our expectations were pretty low (importing from China, did a lot of research and were ready for a lot of problems). We were actually quite impressed with the Thunderlaser - it was relatively reliable and we ran it 4-8 hours per day every day for those 2 years. Cut quality slowly degraded over that time, but we weren't particularly surprised by this (tbh we got a lot more out of it than we ever expected). We decided to upgrade to one of the big brands for a couple of reasons - we wanted good service and support, and our work requires much tighter tolerances than the Thunderlaser was able to achieve (or perhaps more correctly - tighter than we were able to achieve with the Thunderlaser).

We met with Trotec in Melbourne, and tested one of their units at their office. Their sales guy was great and seemed knowledgeable. His follow-up was great, and gave the impression that they are very service-focused (as I mentioned, very important to us).

We've had the Trotec for a few months now, and we've been overwhelmingly disappointed with their offering. Admittedly, when spending more than 10x the cost of the Thunderlaser, our expectations for the Trotec were very high, but we made that clear to Trotec prior to purchasing, and they were adamant that they could meet our expectations. Some general notes on our experience:

- Somehow they lost the laser-cutter shipping it down from Sydney (admittedly was probably their shipping partner's fault, but what the hell?!)
- Communication was terrible from them as we were trying to arrange delivery and commissioning. They told us this was because they had trade-shows on, but a trade show isn't an unexpected occurrence, they'd be able to plan months in advance for it - did they not consider that they would still need to attend to customers during this time?
- During our learning phase, we had similar problems. eg. we'd call up to ask a question, no one was available, no one would call back, we'd follow up a couple of times and then have someone inexperienced talk for a while without resolving the problem. You'd call back a day or so later and they had no record of the previous call and have to trouble-shoot the same steps again, and be advised the complete opposite from the last call (this happened several times).
- Eventually I told them they need to take back their machine as they can't get it to operate effectively and that's when one of their General Managers became involved and made things worse - he obviously didn't understand the technical side of their product and would bumble through things as an intermediary between us and their main tech guy (as a side note, it seems they have only one person who fully understands the technical side of their product and he is in Queensland. He refused to take back the machine, and we've been attempting to resolve our issues with them since, and feel like we're just slamming our head against the wall.
- Our main product issues are:
- Laser alignment degrades frequently (every couple of weeks)
- There is no fail-safe to prevent a collision between the bed and the laser head
- The cable gantry hangs low and will often knock parts and sheets around the bed while cutting
- Cut order optimisation will not run on vectors when there are more than 5000 individual entities (this is common in our work, and when we would most often require optimisation to reduce cut time)
- Variation across beds of 4-5mm. Again this affects our cut quality and tolerances.
- Extraction is poor even with a large extractor - looking at the design of the vents within the cutter, it doesn't seem very well thought-out (bad location, easy to clog, etc)
- Throughout this process, mostly out of necessity, our guys have become pretty good at trouble-shooting the machine, and will usually call up when they can't resolve the problem themselves. They will generally have a fair idea of what's going on though. Trotec tech support will not listen to them when they give them feedback though, and spend 1-2 hours dicking around on our machine and then come to the same conclusion as what we were trying to tell them.

It would be great to hear what other peoples experiences have been with Trotec to see if we're an unlucky one-off. To me it seems like we've had such a consistently bad experience, it must be similar for others, but maybe our expectations are much higher than others?

Thanks

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