04-05-2007, 03:01 AM
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| | | Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: romania
Posts: 48
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A few words on my new Chinese laser (long) | |
I bought a laser from a chinese company about 2 months ago and am quite surprised by the results. We had to resolve a few accuracy issues with the import export documents while the laser was in transit to Europe but the company was very helpful in originating and altering what was required. The company took a week longer to complete the laser than they originally said.
The packing crate was plywood and well constructed and the machine was well packed. The metal casework is quite "industrial" and and the fit and finish is not the best I have seen but it's mostly a cosmetic problem and I expect helps to keep costs down. As for the CNC components, rails and micro-stepper motors; the quality is high. The rails are made in Taiwan and the motors and other mechanical components are of a high quality. The main issue, is the "Chinglish" manuals which ar a little rough but, if you read them carefully you can understand what is being said. It comes with a well made, not too noisy extractor blower, a compressor for the air assist and a submersable pump for water cooling. All seem to be of reasonably good quality and have proved, so far, to operate reliably. I did have a small water leak in the water pressure sensor, but I reseated the threads and it is fine now.
The glass laser tube was not installed when it came and required us to install it, solder the leads and align the laser. It's quite demanding and, if I had looked at the supplied video disk first, it would have been a lot easier. Once aligned, it remains true so far.
The software is not in the form of a windows print driver. It's either a standalone program they supply which imports a variety of vector or bmp files or installs as a plugin to Corel 11 or 12 or autocad 2006 (or 2004 i expect) The cutting and engraving quality is very good and can be adjusted through a range of settings in the software. ONce the file is ripped by their software it is sent to the laser via a USB connection. It all works well with no glitches except the program sometimes closes when trying to import .ai files. I expect this has something to do with the .ai export settings because the same file will import the 2nd time.
As for support, the company has English speaking contact people and has assigned one to us and she's very helpful in passing our questions to their technical people and they usually repond in one to 3 days.
I also bought the rotary attachment which is quite robust and heavy and seems, if anything, a little over engineered. It works well but we didn't know how to adjust the ratio of the x axis to y output so were initialy adjusting the graphic in Corel. The company has since given us instructions on where to compensate in the software.
All in all, I am quite satisfied with the performance of the machine. I did however order an extra Laser tube in case and lens and mirror kit. I was initially concerned about the build quality but after using it for 2 months it has proved to be a robust industrial quality machine for 25% of a US or European made machine. Granted the machine is not as sophisticated but for our purposes which include cutting and engraving acrylic (up to 8mm in one pass) and photo engraving on granite and anodized aluminium, I definitely couldn't justify the exra capital outlay.
Now maybe in 5 years when a Universal Laser would still be humming along problem free and mine develops mechanical problems i may change my mind. But with motors, rails, rollers and belts being so simple to change, I can forsee repairing this machine before laying out $25k plus for a similar sized level one laser.
This has been our experience and if you have question about our experience, I would be glad to reply  |
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