6:06 Minutes: Trotec Speedy 400 Rhino Cutting Time

A customer asked me the other day how long it takes to CNC laser cut my rhino out of 6 mm plywood and the results are very good… about 6 minutes using a Trotec Speedy 400 with an 80 watt laser tube!

Here’s a the 3D assembly animation of this model so you can get an idea of how all the pieces fit together.

If you recall, about a year and a half ago, I also made a modified version of this, slightly larger and optimized for my ShopBot Desktop CNC router which you can watch here.

And let me tell you right now, it took me longer to set-up the machine and screw in the holes to hold down the plywood than it would take this Trotec Speedy 400 to cut out this model!

If I had a thousand of these to produce, it would be hard for me to justify cutting it out using my current CNC router at 6 mm unless I had a full-sheet router like ShopBot’s PRSAlpha which is a mind blowing machine but like all CNC equipment, you gain some and you lose some depending on the application – in this case, at the end of the day, it would have been a wash… you get awesome speed out of the Trotec Laser Speedy 400 but you lose z-axis depth precision you get out of a router.

There are endless ways around these minor design issues, which is why it’s very important to know what application your model will be used for, what material you will be cutting/engraving and the production timeline you have to contend with.

There are a lot of other very small changes that needed to be done – hence why I optimized another version of this Rhino for the router… yet another model I seriously look forward to video taping the cutting and assembly of.

You can get this model right now and a whole bunch more at CNCKing.com under CNC Router/Laser / It’s Alive! or CNC Laser / It’s Alive!