500W laser?

From my research you would be about a grand in for cheap Chinese stuff… if you wanted better equipment probably a few grand

The first is ok but the second not so much but Chinese is not all ways reliable at the cheapest end we will see i may start looking but a good plasma is still cheaper. How do they work with work glass and plastics?

I agree, I was trying to find a laser more in the 100w range hoping it would be more affordable… they sell whole laser marking machines that implement fiber lasers for like 3 grand. So I feel like there have to be cheaper options. As for how it works on glass and plastic, I’m not sure. I haven’t looked into Glass and plastic yet :slight_smile:

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If anyone wanted to take a gamble:
Repaired fiber laser for dirt cheap

I have worked with similar fiber lasers in the 500 Watt range before but these were roughly a 100 times the price of the lasers you showed here. This makes me really sceptical. Even the yellow glas fibers showed in the product pictures would normaly cost more then the prices shown there for the entire system.

Therefore, I really can t imagine these cheap lasers to function properly and safely but maybe I m wrong. If they actually work that would be an incredible offer!

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Can I ask when you worked with them last? My understanding is they have come down substantially in price over the last 3 years.

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Just two years ago. One part of the high price point is to ensure a good beam quality which is probably not that critical for a diy application.
And I am really no expert on the Laser market in general. The price just appears weird to me having that one reference point

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i do agree, i am no expert either, just relating what i have been reading from other sources. and these are super cheap Chinese lasers, probably clones, but in my mind as long as it works, and produces 1/3 of the stated power i would be more then happy :slight_smile:

especially considering when cutting metal or wood, a fiber laser running at 1030nm wavelength has an optical density about 5X that of a CO2 laser. so i would expect even a 40W fiber laser to cut better then a K40 CO2 laser.

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This isn’t apples and apples, but we buy laser line products from Cemar and they are in the $800-1000 range for a green line laser. We bought some on alliexpress for $30 and they are doing just fine. We had a few that died early on (maybe 1 out of 20) but the difference in quality vs price was certainly not “you get what you pay for” We have about 50 of the $30 lasers in service. The beam is not quite as crisp but it the brightness is there and for us it was a no brainer choice.

I was looking at fiber lasers and I am very tempted to pull the trigger on one of these. Did anyone else give it a try.

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The Ali Express links are showing “not available” for me, but do still show the product, and they’re listed at $5000 and $4500, not the $500 in the original posting in this thread.

I’d say this is definitely “do not look at laser with remaining eye” territory, but since there’d be a hole out the back of your head, that wouldn’t be an issue.

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Yes it was a sale they had a while back where they where selling them for $500 for what seemed like reconditioned units. In todays market it would proabbaly be really hard to find such a good price.