Epilog Laser Question

[Wayne Grecco]

Hello All...

Looking for some input here....

I currently have an Epilog Mini 24 60W and am looking to upgrade to a Fusion 32 or Fusion 40. But I have heard a few people complaining about them and that they are having issues with their machines. I was wondering if there is an issue with the machines because they are "newer" and maybe some of the bugs haven't been worked out yet. I just don't want to spend all that money and then end up with a lemon or be "down" for periods of time.

Thanks for the anticipated advise!
Wayne

[Gary Hair]

Hello All...

Looking for some input here....

I currently have an Epilog Mini 24 60W and am looking to upgrade to a Fusion 32 or Fusion 40. But I have heard a few people complaining about them and that they are having issues with their machines. I was wondering if there is an issue with the machines because they are "newer" and maybe some of the bugs haven't been worked out yet. I just don't want to spend all that money and then end up with a lemon or be "down" for periods of time.

Thanks for the anticipated advise!
Wayne

You can look at my signature for my advise... Very happy with it!

[vic casware]

Hi Wayne,
It's like most stuff these days I buy something and it works perfectly someone else buys
the same thing and have nothing but trouble.
I've had my 75W Fusion 40 since July last year and yes a couple of issues
mainly from Corel, but since It's been brilliant, it's on every day.
The software is a bit of a pain if you don't run it through the separate Job Manager
but once you get used to that it rocks along nicely. IMO

[Mike Null]

Wayne

I agree with Gary. You owe it to yourself to at least take a look at Trotec. My machine is just days away from it's tenth anniversary with the only downtime being a few days to have the tube re-manufactured 2 years ago.

[Kev Williams]

Isn't the Fusion the one you can interchange tubes from C02 to fiber?

[Keith Winter]

The opinion I gather from reading the board every day is the Trotec is the most reliable.

It's not without faults though, all lasers go down at one point or another, I have a Trotec down right now in fact. All lasers have issues from time to time, what matters is the support you get. Trotec has been very good on this issue, but I've still been down a little more than a week. Would I buy another Trotec? Yes. If I was in your situation and already liked my Epilog, I'm unsure. You'll have to learn two softwares and if you have an assistant they will have to learn two softwares. If you are going to sell your other machine that should make it easier to switch. Not a deal killer, but something to consider. If you have a really good rep that is attentive in your area, that's worth it's weight in gold IMHO.

[Jay Selway]

Wayne

I agree with Gary. You owe it to yourself to at least take a look at Trotec. My machine is just days away from it's tenth anniversary with the only downtime being a few days to have the tube re-manufactured 2 years ago.

We were looking at getting a Fusion 40 (120w) as well. I have an epilog helix, and the speed on epilogs just can't hold a candle to trotec. For comparison, I had a specific job run on a fusion 40 recently, and it took 53 minutes. With the exact same settings, it took 23 minutes on the Trotec Speedy 400 120w.

Financially, it just doesn't make sense to buy a machine that's more than twice as slow.

Speaking of speed, I'd give Universal a look. They have a new feature called 'SuperSpeed' that is apparently 280 inches per second. The idea is two laser tubes, engraving 2 lines at once, vs a single tube doing one line.

[Gary Hair]

Speaking of speed, I'd give Universal a look. They have a new feature called 'SuperSpeed' that is apparently 280 inches per second. The idea is two laser tubes, engraving 2 lines at once, vs a single tube doing one line.

I'd have to see the price of this "feature". It wouldn't surprise me if it were less expensive to have two machines instead of one with two tubes. Even if it weren't cheaper, I'd still rather have two machines so I could run two completely different jobs simultaneously and truly double my output. Two tubes engraving two lines is not much more than a gimmick in my opinion.

[Jay Selway]

I'd have to see the price of this "feature". It wouldn't surprise me if it were less expensive to have two machines instead of one with two tubes. Even if it weren't cheaper, I'd still rather have two machines so I could run two completely different jobs simultaneously and truly double my output. Two tubes engraving two lines is not much more than a gimmick in my opinion.

I've seen it. It's crazy fast. Like smokes the trotec speedy laser fast. And you can get up to 150w in the system. And if you can get that much speed out of one, why not get two?

I'm interested in them, but not interested in being one of the early adopters. Which is why I'm adding a speedy 400 to my shop in the next few weeks. I might replace my epilog helix with one of these universals, but we'll see.

[Jay Selway]

Here it is running side by side with "the competition" (from what I can tell that's a Trotec).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6UzPTfdJq0 skip to a minute in to see the side by side test.

[Keith Winter]

I'd have to see the price of this "feature". It wouldn't surprise me if it were less expensive to have two machines instead of one with two tubes. Even if it weren't cheaper, I'd still rather have two machines so I could run two completely different jobs simultaneously and truly double my output. Two tubes engraving two lines is not much more than a gimmick in my opinion.

I was very interested in this feature but the thing that scared me off is A) I couldn't find anyone running one of the superspeed lasers on here and B) keeping them in proper alignment, not sure if that would be an issue or not.

[Gary Hair]

Here it is running side by side with "the competition" (from what I can tell that's a Trotec).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6UzPTfdJq0 skip to a minute in to see the side by side test.

I call BS with their test and not because I own a Trotec. You can clearly see that the Trotec head is moving at least twice as fast as the ULS yet it takes over twice as long to run the job. If their contention is that they are faster due to effectively lasering two lines at once, then they should have finished about the same time. Clearly they have the resolution set higher on the Trotec to skew the results. It's not worth my time to do this, but if you slowed down the video and counted the passes that each machine made to do the job, the Trotec did several times as many passes, clearly due to running the job at a higher resolution.

[Keith Winter]

I call BS with their test and not because I own a Trotec. You can clearly see that the Trotec head is moving at least twice as fast as the ULS yet it takes over twice as long to run the job. If their contention is that they are faster due to effectively lasering two lines at once, then they should have finished about the same time. Clearly they have the resolution set higher on the Trotec to skew the results. It's not worth my time to do this, but if you slowed down the video and counted the passes that each machine made to do the job, the Trotec did several times as many passes, clearly due to running the job at a higher resolution.

I'm not 100% on board with what you are saying, but they did definitely choose a piece in which their laser looks best. As far as different resolutions I didn't count the # of passes, however I wonder if the results would be different if the pieces were longer giving the trotec more room to run. This couldn't be more than 2" wide. Since it runs at a higher speed the results might be different on a larger piece.