Trotec Speedy series vs SP Series

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?

 

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

 

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.