Why I bought a Trotec Speedy 400 flexx

If you’ve been following me since the inception of WoodMarvels.com (now CNCKing.com), you would have noticed a trend with my life which I wrote a bit about in my latest book… relocation.

More specifically, roughly every year – I pack-up my bags (and now crates) and move to another country or continent! I always thought of life as a journey which I’ve taken to literally over the past decade.

Well, Australia has been awesome, I’ve had the privilege of not just living in Adelaide but also relocating to Perth just over a year ago… so far, I’ve lived in Cairns, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth! The ShopBot that came here by boat about a year and a half ago will soon be on another journey back to Canada… easily the most traveled CNC router in ShopBot Tools’ history! This time, it has a friend, as you can see in the photograph… my 3D Systems Cube which is equally as much fun and soon, they will both be joined by their larger cousin, a Trotec Speedy 400 flexx in a few short months!

I’m moving to Canada and staying put… time to start a family with little CNC princes and princesses to help me build my kingdom!

Different horizons

When I first came to Australia, I was sure it would be a one-way trip but the stars have aligned in another fashion as have opportunities and that’s leading me to relocate back to my hometown in Canada to start-up my custom CNC manufacturing shop. You can see the rough outline of the site at CNCROI.com but I haven’t cut, engraved, marked, etched or build anything yet so it’s rather image poor which will change after a few weeks once I arrive.

Since I was a kid, I wanted to get into manufacturing… I just love the smell of a shop floor, I love the buzz of machinery and the incredible awesomeness of these tools. It’s really inspiring to me! I now have the opportunity, after 37 years, to delve far deeper into this world and I really can’t say no. I’d be stupid to try to keep what I have at the ignorance of the opportunities I’m being presented with. Unlike most people, I actually thrive on change and “chaos” and quickly get bored with same-old… which is probably why CNCKing.com is so unique, I don’t like working on the same project over and over again, I prefer to design and work with designers and manufacturers who make completely different things. The more challenging the endeavor, the more I enjoy the process behind it! Starting a new CNC shop from scratch is invigorating to me to no end… and the massive opportunity it presents to CNCKing.com is mind blowing. It’s one thing to design, quite another to actually build and share knowledge behind the design in a physical form.

When I began my 3D animation studio, I quickly realized that industrial customers are the best, they have money (always good when you have outstanding invoices), they have passion for what they do (contagious and will spend hours showing you their stuff) and best of all… they are so happy to give shop floor tours, which to me, was the ultimate thrill of it all. I’m so happy that I’ll soon be able to help them in so many other ways across North America! I’ll be located about 20 minutes from the Canadian / American border!

CNC Laser Education

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be trained and educated by arguably the best CNC laser experts in the field over the past two years… I learned so much that I could easily fill a book or two! Much like what I learned when I first got my ShopBot Desktop, having hands-on experience across a large range of machines across several industries has been a massive eye opener! It’s one thing to see a machine, quite another to learn about an entirely new applications in an intensive and comprehensive manner.

I learned so much about lasers that when it came time for me to buy my own, top of the line Trotec Laser Speedy 400 flexx, do you know how long it took me to decide that I’m buying one? About a second! Actually, that’s being generous… I have seen first hand so much that Trotec Laser is by far the best machine out there – bar none!

Why I bought a Trotec Speedy 400 flexx over XXX?

Like I wrote earlier, I’m being overly generous when I say I spent a second thinking about which machine to buy. Why? Because I have experienced first-hand the awesome power of Trotec’s range, from the small rayjet (honestly, buy a Speedy 100 – the jobcontrolX is worth the price difference alone) all the way to the Trotec Speedy 500. Their components and the thinking behind the engineering decisions is incredibly sound. I did look seriously at Epilog’s Fusion, I did look at Kern’s offerings as well as Universal and GCC but they were honestly all a tier down from what Trotec offers. Yes, Trotecs are more expensive BUT that expense is well justified – over the life of the machine, the ROI will blow any other machine out of the water.

Here’s a quick rundown as to why I bought my Trotec Speedy 400 flexx.

Passthrough

I love the Trotec speedy 300 flexx, my only issue with it is passthrough, generally speaking, you don’t use the full bed size anyways, the 300 is already very generous compared to other offerings in the marketplace but I’m starting CNCROI.com from scratch and my competition will forever be stuck with a limited bed size – I’m going after clients who need high quality production and I don’t want to have to say NO to a project, which will have far higher income potential, just because it doesn’t fit on the bed. Passthrough is a no brainer! The ergonomics of the Trotec Speedy 400 as well are to die for.

Fastest engraving machine in the marketplace!

I love the bed size of the Trotec Speedy 500, it’s awesome but unlike the Trotec Speedy 400, it’s a cutting machine that can engrave while the vast majority of the projects I’ll have are engraving. A Trotec Speedy 400 is an engraving machine that can cut – BIG DIFFERENCE when you look at ROI potential. I need a fast head – fastest in the industry – as engraving is where the money is at, not cutting – at least initially. I want precision, speed and power… that’s why I’m getting this specific machine. I need cutting and engraving but what I’ve discovered is that the gravy in the industry comes from engraving more than cutting.

Easy change table

I’ll have a massive diversity of projects, the advantage of Trotec’s easy change table is incredibly important to me. Of course, I’ll be cutting my CNCKing.com projects but I also want to engrave wine bottles, tank tags and the list goes on. I need a machine that has a big bed size but easily modified to suit applications that ONE PERSON can quickly do alone. Professional cutting table is a very nice additional feature as well! I also needed a vacuum table – an awesome feature that’s also a must in addition to general extraction.

Huge bed size

Yeah, bed size isn’t the most important, generally you want to buy more power over bed size when looking into a CNC laser on a budget but like I mentioned, I don’t want to have to say NO to a project just because I have a small bed size. More importantly, if I have a thousand valve tanks that need engraving, I’ll make more money doing the engraving job on a larger bed (more tags per jig) than on a smaller one. My Trotec Speedy 400 will have plenty of power, but with power comes responsibility and in that case, it’s to maximize as much as I can on a per-project basis. The difference in price over the 10+ year lifespan of the machine is almost nothing! Go big or go home!

Flexx

What can I say? Having fiber and CO2 in one machine is AWESOME! Why? Well, if you have an application that requires both for an engraving job – such as engraving knives (steel and wood) and you don’t want to screw around with Cermark… being able to do an entire project in one process is a huge time savings! Sure, I could have gotten ONE CO2 Speedy 400 and ONE Fiber Speedy 400 but in all reality, for me, that wouldn’t have been efficient. It uses more space and one isn’t really a backup of the other should I have a machine failure. How do you back-up a Speedy 400 flexx? With another Speedy 400 flexx! I fail to see the benefits of having two machines when you can have them in one… at least for my application.

Support

Sure, could have saved a small fortune and bought a Chinese machine… I had a few friends do this and guess what, they lived to regret it! Support? None! Something goes wrong? YOU ARE SCREWED! You end-up with an expensive paperweight or at best, a neat workbench in your shop. I went with the absolute best in the market that suits my specific needs – Trotec! In Canada, like here in Australia, I’m dealing directly with the manufacturer, not a distributor or a representative. Why is this important? Well, if it’s 1am in Canada and my machine has a problem, I can call Trotec Australia and they can teamviewer me to fix the issue! Why? Well, Trotec is Trotec – they are all one company! I have access to the most highly informed and talented individuals in the CNC laser industry 24/7/365! That alone is worth the price of the machine! It’s this general piece of mind that’s hard to realize the potential of until you have problems.

I could go on, like Trotec’s hazard environment kit, air flushed optics, inpack technology etc… but these are the main points behind my reasoning to get this awesome CNC laser! If you haven’t experienced JobControlX yourself, again, that alone is worth the price of the machine!

Can’t wait!

So with all that change that will occur in my life over the next few months and as you saw in the picture, things getting packed… you can understand why CNCKing.com project release and general blog writing has dwindled down a bit. I have so many other things keeping me preoccupied so I really can’t wait till about the first of July when I hope to start CNCROI.com full-time.

Interesting fact about CNCROI.com is that ROI does mean “return on investment” but in French, Roi means King. So, I guess I’m CNC royalty across two languages now! I am French btw… but this fact was pure coincidence but wonderful never the less.