Review of Thunder Laser - Mars 130 Plus Order

[KeithOKC]

Hi bigbird. As for the engraving...I think most people who had never seen the difference, they wouldn't think much about it on woods and such. I have the ability to directly compare the two so I get to see the difference more up close. On some other substrates like glass though it might be more problematic. I'm not using it for glass so that doesn't apply here.

The Chinese laser has little lines in it in between each row, and/or where they overlap (in my limited testing). See my attached photo, this is what I was able to get it after some tweaking. If you look very closely you can see the little lines where each row of the beam meets. **NOTE: The built in camera of my phone smooths some of them out so they are harder to see in the photo than in person.** Using a 2" lens at 800 speed here. Looked the same at 900 speed which is near the rated max speed for the Thunder Laser. If I did the same with an RF laser with a 2.5" or even a 4" lens you wouldn't be able to see where the row of each beam met at 300 dpi. (roughly 0.08 interval from what I'm told) The RF laser would also be faster at engraving. It's not the power limiting the engraving speed here, I'm only running at 1/2 power. It's the speed the laser can move at. Does that answer your question?

[Bigbird48]

It does answer the question. But sometime when your not busy I'd like to see the same test done on your trotec 80 watt .

Hi bigbird. As for the engraving...I think most people who had never seen the difference, they wouldn't think much about it on woods and such. I have the ability to directly compare the two so I get to see the difference more up close. On some other substrates like glass though it might be more problematic. I'm not using it for glass so that doesn't apply here.

The Chinese laser has little lines in it in between each row, and/or where they overlap (in my limited testing). See my attached photo, this is what I was able to get it after some tweaking. If you look very closely you can see the little lines where each row of the beam meets. **NOTE: The built in camera of my phone smooths some of them out so they are harder to see in the photo than in person.** Using a 2" lens at 800 speed here. Looked the same at 900 speed which is near the rated max speed for the Thunder Laser. If I did the same with an RF laser with a 2.5" or even a 4" lens you wouldn't be able to see where the row of each beam met. The RF laser would also be faster at engraving. It's not the power limiting the engraving speed here, I'm only running at 1/2 power. It's the speed the laser can move at. Does that answer your question?

[KeithOKC]

Two other things I should note about engraving:

One is swing. The head swings far past the engraving area on a Chinese laser (does this on all brands that I know of), the faster you engrave the farther it swings, which means you have to bring the engraving further inside your project if you are going faster. Limiting your engravable area by a couple inches on the sides beyond the normal area. US machines don't do this. They stop in a predefined location regardless of speed so your engravable area doesn't shrink when you go faster. Not a big deal since you likely aren't engraving to the edge anyway but you did ask about differences so it's worth mentioning.

The second is the Interval or scan gap. I think I can increase the resolution by decreasing the scan gap further. However it would double my engraving time to say drop it to .05 or .04 interval vs the .08 interval I used on this sample board photo. Not worth the trade-off. I'm happy with the results on the wood you see at the .08 interval.


Minor update on cutting which is mostly what I'm doing:
Day 3 (Running 8 hours a day): I'm still really impressed with how it's cutting, no issues so far. The 5200 water chiller is also working perfectly keeping it at a nice and consistent 17c.

[KeithOKC]

Bigbird see the comparison images below of an 80w Trotec vs 130w Thunder I did today per your request.

Top is a Speedy 80watt 5 minutes 38 seconds 55% speed 100% power
Bottom is my 130watt Thunder Chinese laser 12 minutes 27 seconds 0.07 interval 800 speed 27 power (about 20% of my max power)

Some notes:
1) If you look closely you will see the wood grain in the Trotec, in the Chinese Thunder Laser you see little lines instead of the wood grain. I'm told 0.07 interval is the Chinese rough equivalent to the 333 dpi I'm running on the Trotec. The Chinese is nice, but you can see the Trotec is much smoother.
2) I'm also told my 130w Chinese is at a disadvantage on resolution because a 130w chinese beam is fatter than a 80w. So if I had a 80w the chinese engraving might be sharper.
3) 2.5" lens on the Trotec. 2" lens on the Chinese
4) If you look from the left the Trotec is at the Edge on the top and bottom. The Chinese this is as close as I could get it to the left edge without a frame slop error. Of coarse I could move the piece of wood even further into the machine, but this clearly shows how much slop/overrun there is on the honeycomb. Typically you won't engrave all the way to the edge so this is not a big deal, but worth noting for comparison sake.

[gfacer]

You should be able to go a little lower on the power, although that varies from Tube to Tube it seems, mine could go to 10-15% of max and still fire properly....times would not change, but it would be a little less dark. Really, Trotec looks light and chinese looks too dark, but I realize that's reading too much into a quick test.

Also, on the overrun, that is a changeable setting in the control firmware (on mine anyways), you might be able to tighten that up, perhaps with acceleration values, since you have servos. The trotec must manage without as it can vary the pulses per inch as it slows down at the edge.

[KeithOKC]

Hi gfacer on the Trotec I change the ppi to change the color of the engraving. Higher ppi setting darker the burn but the depth stays the same.

I realize Chinese glass tube lasers don't have this setting but is there any setting you can change to vary the darkness of the engraving beyond lowering the Speed and power?

You should be able to go a little lower on the power, although that varies from Tube to Tube it seems, mine could go to 10-15% of max and still fire properly....times would not change, but it would be a little less dark. Really, Trotec looks light and chinese looks too dark, but I realize that's reading too much into a quick test.

Also, on the overrun, that is a changeable setting in the control firmware (on mine anyways), you might be able to tighten that up, perhaps with acceleration values, since you have servos. The trotec must manage without as it can vary the pulses per inch as it slows down at the edge.

[KeithOKC]

So this will be my final update unless something changes or someone has a question. I'll try to wrap it all up.


In the three weeks since we received the first replacement tube we have been cutting 10-12 hours a day 5 days a week with it. I must say I'm blown away with the cut quality and smoothness of the machine when cutting. Most all of the hard setup work was done in advance at the manufacturer. All in all I'm happy with the ultimate resolution we came to on the tube issue, and I'm also very happy with the Thunder laser machine. So far it's been a great machine for us.