I think I asked last year here about opinions on Golden lasers - I was asking for a friend. The company still exists, but not a lot of information is about, it seems.
Well an opportunity just landed in my lap to buy one from a school 5 hours away - 130watt, tube replaced 3 years ago. 1300 x 900 bed. Chiller, air assist pump. No vacuum extraction though, as it's from a school and they had it piped into their big cyclone dust extraction system. Also I got the laptop with it, and dongle, and Flexisign 10.
The clutzy program that drives it is awful, but it did manage to cut 15mm acrylic acceptably, and 20mm a little crudely, laving some small tabs at the bottom edge. The air assist is manually turned on. The chiller looks brand new. It's a 3000 something.
The speed and power settings resemble the ULS machine we have: i.e. they're a percentage of 100, not a mm/sec etc with units.
The bed is a lot removeable of vertical razor-edged bars from front to back, with emptyness below.
Setting the height/z axis involves lowering the nozzle onto a bit of 3mm acrylic spacer over the substrate.
It was serviced and new mirrors put in 2 weeks ago.
It operates fairly quickly, compared with our M300.
It should help us with bigger stuff anyhow - and augment the little ULS laser as well as our cnc router.
I see you can get red coloured chinese imports on Fleabay- ex Sydney, brand new for $5k, inc freight, with the same bed size and power as this
Hopefully this might be a bit better- it's as dirty as an old BBQ plate inside the bed, butfingers crossed it'll be a worthwhiole investment!
The teacher who used it, didn't like it, and kept saying it was recommended he spend $2k to get american electronics and motherboard, and then do-away with the dongle and chinese software.
IF I was to do that, what's the currently most preferred drives & system, please?
(Though for now it can stay as is and earn its keep.)