Epilog Service is #1

[Ron Thompson]

Hi all,

I have a sad story to tell.

I've had my Epilog Mini 45 watt for about 9 months now and the more I use it the more I like it.

Well, last Tuesday my brother-in-law passed away in his sleep at only 53 years old. He was having lots of heart problems for the last year, so the family knew it was coming.

He wanted to be [FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']cremated[/FONT] so that was done on Thursday. We purchased a $200 oak urn for me to engrave his photo and a poem about his life. I started up the laser on Monday morning and it had just finished his photo but not his name or dates yet, when my Epilog powered down. When I attempted to power back on, the fans would spin up and down and up again, the machine would beep a few times then shut down.

I called Epilog support and talked to Koy. We agreed that the power supply was bad. I explained that I was doing an engraving on an urn for a relative that had passed. I was half way done and needed to get my laser up fast so I would have the urn ready for his mass on Thursday.

Within 24 hours from the time I called, I had the newer power supply and modified back cover that I needed. I installed it in 30 minutes and the finished engraving the urn.

Thank you Epilog for the great service you provide to your customers. I know where I'm going when I'm ready for a larger engraver.

Ron Thompson
San Jose, CA

[Steve McKee]

Ron, please accept our condolences, most sorry to hear about your brother-in-law.

Steve & Jeannie

P.S. I have to agree about the tech support at Epilog. They've always come through for me.

[Pat Kearney]

I had some minor problems when I first got my laser and I had the same excellent service from Epilog. Koy was the person I dealt with as well.

[Bill Cunningham]

I have 'yet' to wait even 24hours for parts from Epilog, and I'm in Ontario Canada.. I just replaced my laser tube, ordered it Thursday afternoon, and it was in my hands by noon Friday.. Same for a x motor replacement last year..
sure beats the horror stories I've heard about some imported lasers from Asia..

[Rags Alan Ragland]

I to had great service from them. I have replaced my mother board three times and Don walked me through it and had the part to me the next morning. He always returns my call quickly and even gave up going to lunch once to help me.
Dr. Rags

[Robert Ray]

You are seeing the same good service that my friend Chris had seen during the time he owned his Mini 24. He had a few issues, and Epilog responded quickly with great solutions.

Yesterday he sent me an email saying that Epilog is refunding most of his purchase price. Now he is looking for another laser.

What happened is I had been giving Chris half of my workload the past 8 months because I had been overloaded. I have a 35W Laserpro Venus, and Chris had the 40W Mini 24, and his processing time was always 35% slower than my laser. The reason is that any faster than 25% speed, the Epilog Mini will break into an oscillation, so Chris throttles down the power to 35% and speed to 25% in order to cut straight parts instead of parts squiggly line parts.

Well we went to the Maker Fair this spring in San Mateo, and there were several laser companies present. I just happened to have a test file on a thumb drive with me, and we stopped at the Epilog booth, and told the salesman about the problem. The saleman ran the file at 100% on his 40W Mini 24, and the part came out perfect. We agreed something was wrong with Chris's machine, and that started a parts swap thing with epilog, until finally they offered him a new machine.

Chris sent his machine, 9 months old, back to the factory, and Epilog was testing a new replacement machine for him. Then yesterday out of the blue, they told him that they cannot solve the problem, and the new machine also oscillates and vector cuts jaggies like his does. Also that they checked several machines on the floor and they all seem to exhibit the same problem.

They said "We did some testing on the machine we were supposed to send you and the results are not significantly different than your original machine. We also test a number of other Mini 24s, and while there is some slight variation, they all exhibit some degree of the issue."

They offered him to accept the new machine as is or a refund. Chris is taking the refund, and looking for another machine that can do the job better now.

I think that Epilog did an excellent job in suporting their product and trying to satisfy their customer, to the end.

It's too bad that they could not fix the oscillation problem though. The Mini 24 seems to be best suited as a Raster Engraver instead of a small part Vector Cutter, because rastering will never show the oscillation problem due to it's moving in mostly the X Axis, where small part Vector Cutting requires a stiffer XY movement. Maybe the Mini 18 would work better?

-Robert Ray

[Stephen Beckham]

Robert - you've got me curious... Can you PM that file to me or if it's proprietary, clip that part out that would show the squiggles.. I'd love to run it on my Mini 24 and see if it's something related. I cut a lot of thin plastics higher than 35% speed. I cut some at 100% speed and 30% power and haven't seen the issue.

I wonder if it's something with the newer machines. The last version of firmware upgrade was only for newer machines...

[Pete Simmons]

I have a Mini-18 35 watt.


I do a fair amouint of vector cutting and it works perfect.

I seldom vector cut faster than maybe 50% speed just do to the material I am cutting.

I cut mostly 0.125 wood, 0.125 plexi, 0.250 plexi.

Circles and arcs come out perfect.

[Brian Robison]

I'm wondering about the dpi setting. I know it's not supposed to make a difference in Vector cutting, but try to cut a circle at 75 dpi and tell me what it looks like!

[Ben Levesque]

Ron I apologize for stealing your thread, and yes Epilog support is great I agree 100% in this matter.

But this subject of oscillating is really interesting. Back in 2005 when I was searching for a laser and doing tests with one of Robert’s file, this results came up on a bigger Epilog (I don’t remember the model) from a local supplier.

1/16" square cube.

At the time I thought it was a cleaning issue since the laser use for the demo was the supplier main tool for his business. Today I need to be careful with My mini-18 35 watts because this is happening If I go too fast, my circle are more ovals, with the size we play at, those tiny details are showing off easily.

Now I'm doing research on the X axis belt to see if tightening it, would resolve this issue.

Ben

[Larry Bratton]

Yep..I had a motor go on mine and I had it the next morning. You gotta work pretty hard to beat Epilog's service.

[David Fairfield]

Wierd. 3 years running an Epilog Mini 24 doing very fine scale miniature work, have no oscilation problems with straight cuts at any speed on either axis. Need to take curves slower to get nice smooth transitions, otherwise it can get a bit wiggly if you look very, very closely.

I wonder if the coiled air assist tube might be catching on something and vibrating the mirror?

Dave

[David Fairfield]

Ben your photo is showing as a red x, can you post it again. Like to see what issues you're having.

[Doug Griffith]

When I first bought my Mini 24, there was a slight squiggle when vectoring large elipses. I traced it to a slightly loose linear rail on the x-axis. If I put my finger on the end of the air assist tube, I could feel forward and back movement on the y-axis. My Epilog rep came and checked it out and I had a new rail from the factory in a day or two. The new rail was far tighter than the original and helped solve the problem.

During all the testing we were doing, we found a glitch when vectoring flat elipses that we could not solve. The problem happens with different machines, drivers, settings, and both Corel and Illustrator. Small bumps appear where indicated. I don't cut flat elipses often so it hasn't been an issue.


Epilog gave great service the only time I needed them.

[David Fairfield]

Ah, I think those squiggles on the curves are a common problem regardless of the make. I've made a point to examine curves on lasered items and I usually find them. If there's a machine on the market that doesn't produce them, I'd like to hear about it.

Apparently it has something to do with loss of stability under speed, possibly a momentum issue, though I've noted that they are identical every time the same part is produced. If I have a curve that needs to look perfect under close scrutiny, I color it differently and use a low speed and lower the power setting to match.

These wiggles can also be eliminated by sanding or filing the finished part. Finishing work like that has always been a part of craftsmanship. I think we're pretty spoiled by high tech.

Dave