To all I finally got to meet up with Frank Fang of Rabbit Laser in Texas last week. I had tried a couple of months back but was very short on time in April. While on vacation, my family and I met Frank at the Plano, TX. Fry's store where Frank and I discussed the merits of good customer service to the American market and what differences we face with the Chinese mindset vs. American mindset.
I was an hour well spent.
www.hxlaser.com - Rabbit Laser or Jinan Hengxing Computer Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd as listed on the website is the company founded by Frank's high school classmate. This personal connection will help (in my opinion) the US buyers of their products in getting service and support for these laser engravers. At length I discussed the issue of stocking parts including at least one tube for each model allowing for quick replacements as needed. Since the tube issue is one of interest to me because of a broken tube I received I hope that Frank will be successful in getting a shipment from China to support the US customer base.
SOFTWARE
Issues we discussed include the current software provided with these lasers and its inability to currently support CorelX3 or Adobe Illustrator direct from within the application. Instead we must import a graphic into LaserCut which is a very rudimentary program at best. As well it requires a soft dog (doggle) which prevents the user from running the application on several boxes which we all seem to do. Here's a hint Frank / Jinan Hengxing Computer Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. We need a windows DRIVER written which allows for PRINTING direct to the device from ANY application and NO DOGGLE. If we buy the laser it should operate like any other peripheral devise. Once that happens the overall use of the laser is dramatically improved and sales will certainly increase. I am going to buy Mach3 and try to format it to do what I want with the laser. If successful I'll post a post processor for my HX laser here.
HARDWARE
Parts are important and shipping a laser tube from China is cost prohibitive for the single tube user. HOWEVER shipping a single crate even half the size of my machine could contain plenty of parts, tubes, whatever that would make the service of these machines worth it. I imagine, in the US, shipping a tube via standard FEDEX would be about $50-75 USD depending on distance. The tubes can be packed in their original boxes, inserted into a round tube with ample room and packing foam sprayed to solidly pack the original box. We have shipped neon tubing for exhibits this way and it has worked with ZERO breakage for twenty years. not a bad record. As far as the belts, motors these are readily available at industrial supply houses everywhere. The controller cards and motor drive circuits from china can be replaced with Geeko drive controllers easily.
That's all for now.
Pete
06-25-2007, 04:56 PM
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