@l_shearer you answers…
Tubes break. Will it be guaranteed for the 12 months?
The tube shouldn’t break unless the cooling fails or you mistreat the machine and smash it about… However the gas inside becomes contaminated and has to be replaced. The tube will be a refurbished one.
Old lenses make for bad cuts, engraved. Will they refurbish the glass?
The glass is in good working order, old lenses aren’t the issue, again mishandling them, or long term neglect causes the dust to get burnt to the lens and block the light, eventually causing the lens to heat and crack… There is no sign of wear to the lens, but there is no way to know if it is new or old, and they won’t be replacing that I don’t imagine.
Will they polish or replace the mirrors?
Again this is unlikely because they are in good condition and don’t just wear out, they have to be damaged to have a fault. Unlikely.
Will they refurb or guarantee the HV supply?
The main issue is believed to be the power supply and the tube power, so these are both being replaced yes.
Will it include sufficient software license?
It comes with JobControl X which is the latest, and has an indefinite license, in the future they may update the software but we don’t have to use the new one unless we want the features… Honestly there is unlikely to be anything major that we’d need and they may be open to a free upgrade if they see some marketing value back in a couple years when it’s time to upgrade software.
Summary
Trotec are offering to do what is likely to cost them £5k to refurbish for £1k costs to us, they are giving us a machine which is still valued by them at £10k and they’ve already spend at least £3k on us with all the servicing and delivery.
Originally we agreed we’d cover the shipping costs to get it to us which was £600, they never asked for that either.
Trotec have been incredibly generous, supportive and understanding. They love what we’re doing and want to help, but they are a business and need to make it work for them.
Trotec no doubt has a multimillion pound turn over so they are hardly going to try and scam us out of £1k on some half baked laser cutter. The issues we’ve had so far they’ve tried to resolve and have been bad luck for the most part.
The Speed 300 is probably the best machine any Makerspace/Hackspace has in the world, it’s definitely better than the Epilogs used at most Fablabs, better than the Universal Laser Cutters I’ve used at my old job, it is way better than the laser cutters made HPC, Just Add Sharks and other imported chinese machines.
