Greetings,
I've been doing a fair amount of research regarding a possible replacement for our shop's engraving machine. A little background - we are a smaller engineering/manufacturing OEM that builds filtration machines for several different industries. We currently have a Gravograph GT M40DV that we use to engrave plastic laminated push-button legends, valve tags and name-plates. We also do some etching (diamond drag?) on some pre-printed/painted stainless nameplates. Software is Gravostyle 5 running on an old PC with XP. We've had the machine for many years and recently has started to leave extra marks when traversing back and forth on some of the larger nameplates. I've been tasked with trying to determine if we should repair the existing machine or look into a new one.
Other things to consider:
- We have in the past had to outsource stainless steel valve tags and nameplates for machines that are in corrosive environments. I believe these were laser etched. So the ability to do this in-house might help justify a new machine.
- Currently the operator has to manually type in each legend/plate to engrave it. We have no connection between our CAD drawings and the engraving software.
- Operator does have several saved templates in Gravostyle 5 that would be nice to retain if possible.
- Can only engrave 1 plate at a time
Not sure of a budget yet, but we did price out a refurbished Gravograph LS100EX (40W) direct from the manufacturer and that came out to $13,000. My boss thought that would probably be too high to go to our president with. So my best guess is that if we could keep it under $10,000 that would be ideal.
So my first question - is the M40 worth repairing? According to the operator, the tool isn't lifting high enough the further out it extends on the Y-axis. It's fine on the push button and 1x3" tags, but on the 5x6" nameplates its starts marking around 3" down.
Secondly, if we did get a new machine would laser or rotary work best? I like the thought of a laser's versatility. It would allow us to do all we are doing now and do SS tags (with Cermark), but I don't think we can afford a Gravograph, Epilog or Trotec. That leaves a Chinese import or going to an importer like Rabbit. Or used. And there is the potential software issues - we don't want to spend a lot of time learning something new if possible. If it's not Gravostyle then we'll likely lose all our templates.
Looking for opinions and for anybody who might have been in a similar situation.
Many thanks,
Jim
Waukesha, WI