Patiently waiting....

Hopefully I can order my laser in a week or two. Since I didn't want to put it on my credit card I opted to go with a home equity line of credit. The bank said the appraiser would do a 'drive by' appraisal. I was like 'oookaaaay??' That was a new one to me. The call me a few days later and gave me a stupid low appraisal. I told them they were about $150k low. So they pushed a request through to have a walk through appraisal done. A few days later they had the new number and was within $2k of where I told them is should be in the first place. I went this route because I got a super low rate.

I am being as patient as possible. I know Rabbit Laser said they had about a two week lead time to deliver. Since this is my first laser I figured I would pay the premium for a US based vendor. Nothing better to do at this point so I thought I would share.

Going with Rabbit is a smart move. Ray knows his lasers, hes helped us out in the past with machine issues.

The only draw back is they dont offer over 80 watt tubes but for most 80 watts is plenty of power.

Once you get one laser moving you'll want more :-)

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Originally Posted by Robert Bonenfant

Going with Rabbit is a smart move. Ray knows his lasers, hes helped us out in the past with machine issues.

The only draw back is they dont offer over 80 watt tubes but for most 80 watts is plenty of power.

Once you get one laser moving you'll want more :-)

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For what I am planning to do the 80 watts should be just fine. Mostly cutting and 90% of the time will be wood pieces. Just noticed you are also in the Cleveland area.

Yeah were located in Columbia Station about 15 minutes from Cleveland International.

We mainly cut wood as well, when i first started I had a 80 watt machine and it cut 1/8" and 1/4" very well. Have you went and visited Rabbits warehouse yet ?? We went about a year ago when they moved to there new location, It was pretty cool seeing about a 100 crated lasers all lined up.

They also opened up on Saturday (at the time they weren't opened on weekends) for a few hours so I could meet them and I needed to pickup a few emergency mirrors and lens. Lesson learned have extra lens and mirrors in stock at all time :-)

I have a laser I picked up from Automation Technologies because Ray didn't have the one I wanted in stock. I am from Medina OH

I bought mine from Ray 2 years ago now and have been very happy with my 60 watt and the customer service.

I haven't been able to get down to Rabbit for a visit. It has been a very busy time of year with my son. Between driving him around to school, marching band, Jazz band, cross country and being the official photographer for the cross country team there just hasn't been much time to take the 3 hour drive. No question in my mind after researching that Rabbit is the right choice for me. I have a lot of design ideas to get drawn in SketchUp.

The only thing I don't believe that the Rabbit laser has is that I would have liked is network connection as opposed to only USB. Fortunately I have a spare laptop that I can dedicate to the laser. My waiting has been well spent time though. I have already familiarized myself with the RD Works software (well as much as I can without a laser) and developed a workflow to go from a 3d design to the laser.
1. Create design in Sketchup
2. Use an awesome plugin called 'Milling Tools' to generate the 2D shapes from the 3d model
3. Select the 2d shapes and export them to DXF
4. *Depending on the type of project I can further modify the DXF's in CAD if required
5. *Depending on the type of project import the dxf part files into another great program called 'nest professor' to nest the parts for cutting. (I have tried many of the nesting softwares that are out there except for the big expensive ones. This one is great and fairly low cost $380 if I recall. I also saw many online products that were monthly subscriptions and none that I tried gave as good of results.)
6. Import dxf files into RD Works to set the tool paths, power and speed. (what I don't know is if rd works can detect cad layers or colors to automatically group geometry. Does anyone have that answer?)

Lot of work it looks like moving from SketchUp to rdworks. Btw, program will detect colors, but only the ones in rdworks natively. Unless you are stuck just designing in 3d, I would get copy of coreldraw and directly export with plugin to Rd. Way easy. And there is a under $100 (I think under $70) nesting program for coreldraw that others say works well. I just manually nest what I have to do right now.

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Originally Posted by John Lifer

Lot of work it looks like moving from SketchUp to rdworks. Btw, program will detect colors, but only the ones in rdworks natively. Unless you are stuck just designing in 3d, I would get copy of coreldraw and directly export with plugin to Rd. Way easy. And there is a under $100 (I think under $70) nesting program for coreldraw that others say works well. I just manually nest what I have to do right now.

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It's really not as much as it looks. Seconds in reality. Since most of my designs are assembled pieces 3d is the way to go. If I were mainly cutting out simple 2d designs and engraving on them then yes I agree that CD would be just fine. Ok so on a positive note it does look like I can import my DXF into CorelDraw and use the eNest program for CorelDraw to do the nesting. I will have to give this a go.

Jerome i live in Medina as well, Close to the town square, Small World.

What machine did you purchase from Automation Technologies ?? We are buying a kern laser but waiting for the full funds to be ready (a few more weeks). They have a 8 week production time so we are thinking about buying another laser to get us through the Holiday rush - I seen automation has a 150 watt machine for $20K, it says in stock, when you ordered your machine were you able to pick it up same day ?? Also hows the customer support?

Good choice on machines, I have never regretted buying a Chinese machine with US support. I know it costs a few dollars more, but since it was my first laser I wanted to reduce the learning time as much as possible and let the machine make money for me sooner than later.
Enjoy, Scott

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Originally Posted by Robert Bonenfant

Jerome i live in Medina as well, Close to the town square, Small World.

What machine did you purchase from Automation Technologies ?? We are buying a kern laser but waiting for the full funds to be ready (a few more weeks). They have a 8 week production time so we are thinking about buying another laser to get us through the Holiday rush - I seen automation has a 150 watt machine for $20K, it says in stock, when you ordered your machine were you able to pick it up same day ?? Also hows the customer support?

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Yes I went there to do a demo test. He showed me how to run it and I took it home the same day I was cutting the next day with it. Give him a call and see if he would deal a little as he did with me if I paid with cash or a bank check and pick it up

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Originally Posted by Michael Ramsey

It's really not as much as it looks. Seconds in reality. Since most of my designs are assembled pieces 3d is the way to go. If I were mainly cutting out simple 2d designs and engraving on them then yes I agree that CD would be just fine. Ok so on a positive note it does look like I can import my DXF into CorelDraw and use the eNest program for CorelDraw to do the nesting. I will have to give this a go.

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Update on this: I installed CorelDraw to give the nesting plugin a try. I referred to the name as eNest but it is eCut. The price of the plugin is good but it will only work with the full CorelDraw Graphics Suite and not the Student/Home version of the app. Ecut works ok but I think nest professor works better. I would also have to purchase the graphics suite 2017 to work with .dxf files.

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Originally Posted by Michael Ramsey

but it will only work with the full CorelDraw Graphics Suite and not the Student/Home version of the app

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The reason for that is you don't have macros in the S/H version and everything on the MacroMonster site is, as the name indicates, a macro.

FWIW, there are some threads here or in the comment/review section for CorelDraw Home at Amazon that will point out the specific differences between the Home and full versions that make the Home version a bad investment for use with laser cutters.