I started reading and looking at machines. There are a LOT of variations and technologies & prices. David could you please sum up the options briefly on Diode vs CO2. Also it seems to me the laser power is one thing but another is laser power per unit of square area. For example on that Longer Ray 5 10W machine above they list specs on different models. It turns out the 10W machine has power of 2700W/mm^2 yet paradoxically the 20W version is 2500W/mm^2. The laser focal size on the 10W is much smaller. I'm not sure how important that detail is in practical performance.
You are buying a CO2 laser - what made you decide that?
Diode lasers produce a light beam in the 440-1080 nm range whereas CO2 lasers produce a 10600nm light beam.
The biggest practical difference is power. The most powerful diode on the market is the Atezr at 24w output. It has a very small laser dot of .0048mm^2
But it's also $1600.
One thing to be mindful of is what wood they are cutting. The Atzer claims to cut 15mm basswood. The cut quality will likely not be great as that will take at least a few passes.
My 10w output diode will cut 3mm birch ply in two passes at about 300mm/min at 80% power which is not terribly quick. I could increase the power to 100% and speed up the travel but I found that lower power and slower speed yielded a better cut. It's interesting to note travel speed for diodes is typically measured in mm/min whereas CO2 laser travel speed is measured in mm/sec.
I went with a CO2 for my second laser because I wanted the most power (mine is 38w max and I may opt for a 50w tube) for the least cost.
A couple of drawbacks to a CO2 laser is that a) the laser tube is a consumable and b) power is correlated to tube length.
Used at their max power output a CO2 laser tube will last less time than used at 50% power so a more powerful laser is more economical than lower wattage tube given the same cutting parameters.
A 60w tube is about 1200mm long whereas a 130w tube is 1650mm long. The tube length is why as the wattage goes up, the physical dimensions of the machines also go up within reason. Some machines have bump outs to cover the end of the tube so the machine footprint is not unreasonably large.
