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Anyone have any experience, good or bad, with CAMFive Laser cutting machines. I am looking to purchase one for cutting of 0.060 inch thick polycarbonate sheet. They have said the dual head, 80 watt per head machine will work:
http://www.camfive.com/usa/cma1200ht.html
Looking for any experience with reliability and functionality of this manufacturer.
I am now looking at a CAMFive laser cutter/etcher. Did you get one? What do you think?
I purchased it to cut 0.60" thick polycarbonate sheet. The machine could cut through it but left a black residue on the edge which was not acceptable for our product. I had them make samples before purchasing, but the samples they had made had been cleaned up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phaethon Lives
Make sure the contract terms are fully understood, there is a little bit of a language barrier if English is you only language. Make sure you don't give up all of your leverage in case the unit does not work out.
The quote I received stated that "travel and labor costs for installation are paid for the customer". They also wanted 100% of the cost up front via wire or cleared check. We never do that for obvious reasons (good luck getting your money back if you're does not work). We negotiated 50% down via company check and waited for it to clear. Then they said we had to pay the estimated shipping up front too, pretty annoying. Then they informed us that technician labor and travel was to be paid "by" the customer, which they said was the same as "for" the customer. I explained the difference, but agreed to pay.
The unit arrived in good condition. The technician knew the equipment, but was not an expert at laser cutting.
I tried using shield gasses (instead of air) to remove the charring on the PC, but they did not work. I believe I needed a higher power laser for my application. The ventilation setup was also very poor. Did not remove the PC fumes which are very nasty. I would have had to rework the ventilation/exhaust.
Bottom line, would not cut polycarbonate with a clean edge, but probably fine for other material. I told than per our agreement I wanted to return the unit a get a refund of my 50% down payment. They wanted me to pay for the technician again and ship it back before refunding the money. I said no, would never have gotten the refund. I ended up repacking the unit in their crates myself, sending pictures, and waiting for a cleared check before releasing the shipment to their carrier.
Let me know if you have any other questions
Milena Chauncey, the new sales and marketing manager at CAMFive USA, called me and stated they no longer have Embroidery Cam Corp as a distributor or business partner (Embroidery CAM corp was the entity I had to go through to purchase a CamFive Laser cutter at that time).
She states that a couple of years ago (after my previous post) they decided to open a CAMFive branch in the US and sell the brand directly.
She says that since the time I tried to purchase my machine, things have change a lot.
Many of the issues I had were directly related to the ex-distributer, Embroidery CAM Corp. and their personnel.
CamFive USA may operate more professionally than their ex-distributer did.
The technical issues with cutting polycarbonate would still need to be addressed (black edges and inadequate exhaust), but CAMFive may have the expertise to do so where the distributer did not. If this is your application I would ask them if they have solved these issues, and ask them to make samples from your stock material that have not been cleaned after cutting.
Thank you very much for taking the time to repost your review and to explain what I explained to you before, the issue with the Polycarbonate persist and as far as I know any CO2 laser would give you the same result, this is why we don't advertised that our machine can cut that material. It is our policy to always try new materials that we have not used before and give live demos when the customer is willing to travel.
We now have 2 offices with warehouses and showrooms, One in Orlando, FL and another one in Los Angeles, CA and have 100% customer satisfaction, we have customers all over the country and they are willing to give us good references and some of them even have helped us receiving customers in their shops and showing them how the machine works. The majority of our customers cut or engrave in Acrylic, wood, fabric, marble, glass, ceramic, cardboard, foam, mica and many other things.
If you ever need something you can contact me directly to
Milena Chauncey
[email protected]
855-851-5525
or visit our web Camfive - The way of profit - Embroidery Flat, Embroidery Cap, Laser Machine, Knitting Machine
I'm copying some feedback we got from other customers through email and if anyone needs references I will be happy to give them some
"Thank you very much for arranging Alan’s visit to Nashville.
Both machines are now operating very well and cutting much faster than we had previously been able.
We appreciate the quick turnaround on this call.
Thanks again,
Chris Bennett
Vice President of Operations
Highland Graphics, Inc.
615.482.1396"
" I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for working with us to get Allan up to Ilion for training on our laser. We have been running now for a week with excellent results. Allan was able to quickly diagnose the issue with our installation and has us running good parts in just a few hours. He spent a great deal of time and care in explaining to myself and the group leader on the job all of the necessary maintenance and upkeep items to sustain the quality of the laser. Allan’s guidance proved to be a valuable asset for our team.
Sincerely,
Edward Jackson, CMfgE | Manufacturing Engineer
Six Sigma Black Belt
Remington Arms Company, Inc.
14 Hoefler Ave, Ilion, NY 13357
"Thanks allan, remember, if you are ever over this way, I have some corronas with your name etched on them :)
Harry Perrette
Twisted Industries, Inc.
TwistedIndustries.net
Office: 321-631-6133
Milena,
I came across this thread looking for feedbcak on you laser machines. I have been at your website checking this particular model CFL CMA-1080 | Camfive could you please email me info at [email protected] on campanies that had purchase your product as a reference. Thank you,
Reviews of Camfive software. I found it difficult. Important consideration in my opinion since the software/interface is what you'll spend most of your time working with...
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/laser-...-software.html
Our fair WARNING: STAY AWAY as far as you can from these sharks. This is the worst and most unprofessional laser engraver companies out there - Scary and close to fraud.
That's what we like to share, which happened to us:
(1) We dealt with the CA salesman for a longer time and then wanted to place the order with the offered discount, So far so good. But the nightmare started: They honestly wanted to have our complete credit card information plain text sent via email to them with the note that's there business practice as they got scammed in the past - An absolutely NoGo! This is a huge invitation for fraud! The alternative a wired transfer would have been even more scary, as once the money is transferred, we as customer would have been screwed with no option to get it back incase something would go wrong.
(2) So we refused both payment options and decided to loose the offered discount and ordered through a safe payment gateway via their own WEB site or laser. Bad choice! 2 days later the order was uncommented cancelled with lots of false accusations about an unverified PayPal account and wrong addresses despite the fact that we paid with our credit card and not PayPal and that we are registered business in good standing. The refund promised in a large thousand dollar range is still not received, the credit limit down, and interest rates would apply, thus we filed a charge back against CAMFive through our bank.
We would NEVER ever again do business with these scammers.