Trotec Speedy series vs SP Series

[Tattoosleeve]

We're are moving locations shortly and will have room for additional equipment. One of the things we are fleshing out is whether or not a laser cutter/engraver makes sense as a way to increase our services offered.

There is at least one other laser engraver in town. They are a trophy/promotional items shop and they have a small 12" x 18" table, which they use for doing lamecoids, lamecoid stencils, making small signs and plates and engraving promotional products. We would like to get something bigger so we could handle larger jobs that they don't have the ability to accommodate. When we are talking size the 87"x126" SP3000 table is obviously going to have the largest cutting capability. This would align with our desire to do large scale signage applications. My question is if someone comes in and wants a batch of pens engraved or a single tumbler glass engraved, is the large SP table versatile enough to do these jobs without it being problematic? How is the ease of use on the larger table for the smaller jobs? Does is makes sense to get the Speedy 400 or the smaller SP1500 as an in between solution with better bed access? or Grab an SP3000 for large sign work and a Speedy 300 to handle small and medium size work?

 

[Ian Stewart-Koster]

I can't speak for Trotecs - and I'd love one, but we have an ancient Universal M-300, a 7 year old Chinese Goldenlaser 1300x700 bed, and a new 2 head 2500 x 1300 machine. EACH has its own merits and pluses. There are times when none gets turned on for a week, and times when all three are running at the same time. But they are not equal.
We can, and d, do small jobs on the biggest table - but the smaller tabled ULS will do them better.
Despite having the big bed, and its usefulness, we seldom use the fullsize, but when you DO need it, it is great.

 

[Tattoosleeve]

I can't speak for Trotecs - and I'd love one, but we have an ancient Universal M-300, a 7 year old Chinese Goldenlaser 1300x700 bed, and a new 2 head 2500 x 1300 machine. EACH has its own merits and pluses. There are times when none gets turned on for a week, and times when all three are running at the same time. But they are not equal.
We can, and d, do small jobs on the biggest table - but the smaller tabled ULS will do them better.
Despite having the big bed, and its usefulness, we seldom use the fullsize, but when you DO need it, it is great.

That was what I figured was going to be the case. Thanks for the input.

 

[Sindex Printing]

We got the speedy 400 with the pass through door and have only have 2 use it a couple times. We also haven't had any requests for anything bigger than the bed size of the speedy 400. He have a couple jobs ok f a lot of engraving and just made a jig to hold them and worked out fine.

 

[Tattoosleeve]

Are you doing predominantly engraving and cutting small stuff or are you using it for larger scale acrylic/wood signage as well?

 

[astro8]

You will be way better off with an 8' x 4' (2500x1300) laser for cutting plus a small engraver like a universal, epilog or a trotec for the small and the fine stuff rather than just having the SP3000.
95% of the time you'll never use larger than 8' x 4' sheets of acrylic. Anything over that size is automatically a 2 person job to move around and load on a laser or router as it will flop all over the place. Anything over 10mm thick at 8' x 4' is a 2 person job to load on a laser as you will stuff up the bed. Routers are ok.

I had the opportunity to get the SP3000 but it is just too big for acrylic. You are better off with a larger router at that size. Loading a 3050x2050 sheet and clearing it off after it was cut on that thing would be a slow misery.

You can't really laser cut huge letters and shapes out of acrylic without rounding off the inside corners of letters etc as the laser makes the acrylic brittle and it will crack at the inside corners without much help at all. Even if you don't crack it, your staff, installers and customers will. Even some stuff at 20mm thick, you can just snap it like a carrot at an inside corner. A router cut letter will likely never crack at an inside corner at any size.

 

[Tattoosleeve]

Are you doing predominantly engraving and cutting small stuff or are you using it for larger scale acrylic/wood signage as well?

This is what I'm trying to figure out. Right now we are predominantly a substrate shop. Our main bread and butter is currently substrates, decals, wraps, window frost, etc . We are outsourcing routing and sign can fabrication at the moment. We reface existing can's in house. Even with a large laser or router table we don't have the room or know how to create large scale backlit signage in house but creating non-lit routed / engraved dimensional signs could be a natural progression from where we are now. Similarly pushing into the engraving world with branding and small/medium size cutting services could make sense too. I don't think we're super interested in pushing towards B2C as much as taking our existing business clientelle and being able to offer them tags, plates, volume branding engraving and other B2B type applications.

We are almost 100% on getting a Konsberg X24, we like it for it's ability to process vinyl/banner/etc along with rigid substrates. Our thought was one approach could be to have the Konsberg and the SP2000/3000 and focus on "cutting services" rather than engraving. But we could get the Konsberg and then the Speedy 400 and cover both bases. Other machines that we're considering are the HP FB550 for flatbed printing. Currently running an Epson S60600, Edge FX and multiple size plotters.

 

[ADVANCED DISPLAY]

This is what I'm trying to figure out. Right now we are predominantly a substrate shop. Our main bread and butter is currently substrates, decals, wraps, window frost, etc . We are outsourcing routing and sign can fabrication at the moment. We reface existing can's in house. Even with a large laser or router table we don't have the room or know how to create large scale backlit signage in house but creating non-lit routed / engraved dimensional signs could be a natural progression from where we are now. Similarly pushing into the engraving world with branding and small/medium size cutting services could make sense too. I don't think we're super interested in pushing towards B2C as much as taking our existing business clientelle and being able to offer them tags, plates, volume branding engraving and other B2B type applications.

We are almost 100% on getting a Konsberg X24, we like it for it's ability to process vinyl/banner/etc along with rigid substrates. Our thought was one approach could be to have the Konsberg and the SP2000/3000 and focus on "cutting services" rather than engraving. But we could get the Konsberg and then the Speedy 400 and cover both bases. Other machines that we're considering are the HP FB550 for flatbed printing. Currently running an Epson S60600, Edge FX and multiple size plotters.

Agreed, I’m currently eyeballing a new laser because my epilogue is ancient, not to mention unsafe seeing as there are no drivers for it available on a pc running anything newer than xp. I find myself looking at hybrid laser for engraving and cutting metal and everything else under metal.

but I have wanted a kongsburg for years and hopefully this year is the year, we do high dollar engraved signs out of signfoam but currently have to outsource it and I really want to bring all that work in house. So I’m focusing on the router, and then I’ll get a sensible laser that’s same size of larger table (28”x30” currently) I’d like to be able to etch metal at least though, but I guess the kongsburg can handle that, no?