Hello all,

I am looking to get a laser marking/engraving machine and would like to hear back from you all that have used these machines

I did my search through the website and did not find any recent/relevant information.

Thank you for your reply!

I'm an 07 FFL and have a 50w Raycus source fiber laser "made" by OMTech. I'm assuming you're looking at Chinese-sourced fiber lasers to mark / engrave metal (the cheaper CO2 laser Glowforge type machines won't do it). Nearly all of these sub-$20k fiber lasers use the same Chinese components and are just assembled or imported by different companies with varying levels of support / warranty.

Get at least a 30w unit unless you have lots of free time or are getting it for hobby use, the 20w and lower units take forever to get much depth on metal. Higher wattage let's you use wider focusing lenses which gives you larger work area. A 50w machine with 300mm lens will give you roughly an 11" square work area while a 175mm lens gets you about 6.5", for example. Your focus distance, power, and frequency settings will change every time you switch to a different size lens so there's LOTS of testing, practice, and settings charts to make.

For typical firearm use with basic engraving, engraving Glock frames, or serial numbers and such a 30w Raycus brand laser is just fine. If you're looking to port slides or do deeper engraving get at minimum a 50w laser (up to 100w). JPT branded laser sources give you a bit more flexibility with a wider frequency range but this is really only useful if you're wanting to anneal metal items in addition to engraving / marking. For typical firearm use a MOPA type laser is likely an unnecessary expense.

Software and support is the biggest PITA with these Chinese lasers. They almost all run on EZCad software which is full of bugs and crashes at seemingly random times. There's a very popular software controller called Lightburn in the CO2 laser world that's getting ready to release a version (in a couple months from the news I've seen) that can run fiber lasers which will do away with the nightmares of EZCad. Lightburn will also let you do some 3d engraving without needing a machine with the more expensive EZCad 3 control boards; initially at least Lightburn will not run on a machine with an EZCad 3 board so I'd recommend sticking with a 2d fiber laser with the goal of switching to Lightburn ASAP upon release.

Other than the laser sources (Raycus or JPT are the two primary) the remaining parts are pretty much common to all of these machines. After-purchase support is also limited at best. OMTech or OMGLaser provide at least some form of support to their customers, but keep expectations very low especially with shipping issues out of China. Cloudray is a good manufacturer and source of parts / upgrades and sells on Amazon/eBay, but is China based so expect orders to take forever and triple check item descriptions.

Thank you much...this is/was very helpful!

So, if all the components are the same Raycus, JPT, which brand would buy from in the US?