Why was the Bridge Laser invented?
What is the main purpose of the laser?
Who uses the GMI Laser or Embroidery Laser?
Why are the liquid cooled lasers more expensive?
What is the difference in the beam size of the laser?
What makes cotton and tackle twill yellow?
What is a bridge laser? (top)
Answer Bridge Laser is essentially a metal bridge that can install over and above the existing Embroidery Machine. It works independently but, 100% in harmony with the Embroidery Machine. The Embroidery Machine still does all the stitching, laser head itself moves along the bridge of the gantry and stops at each individual head, and can cut and engrave or do both.
Who invented it? (top)
Answer GMI, a company based in Italy, was one of the original inventors of the embroidery software. In 2008, they will be more than 25 years old. In 1999, the company had released the first Bridge Laser in the world.
Today, GMI has the most sales worldwide and 50% of market share in Italy alone. They offer the largest variety/models of lasers to choose from, widest and most price ranges, as well as maximum experience, especially when it comes to software and working in harmony with it.
Why was the Bridge Laser invented? (top)
Answer In the late 1990s, already there was evidence of the embroidery industry - in the fashion part of the world – Italy, being decimated by cheap labor in North Africa. And that phenomenon was exactly what happened to Canada and USA, where just before 9/11; all the large businesses were moving with (?) into Mexico for production.
And literally within two years, China took everybody’s business, as well as India and Pakistan, where they were offering their services, in their part of the world for US$ 21 – 29 a month, as labor cost per person. So imagine, what we are spending in hourly US$ 12 – 15 per person as an operator, they are spending twice that per month, NOT even for an hour. So naturally when you ship on a container and you consolidate shipping, it still is cheap as peanuts to get production done over there.
What is the main purpose of the laser? (top)
Answer The main purpose of the laser is to be able to offer what no hand can do.
The markets in Canada and United States, and any other developed country, are small-medium run, custom work, quick turnover. You have to offer all these three elements in order to be able to be competitive.
The next thing you have to do is to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crap.
In America, there are 17000-18000 embroidery businesses, 22000-23000 screen printers and the market is saturated. The vast majority, more than 70%, is a home-based market. So, it is people with smaller machines, 1-head, 2-head, 4-head, 6-head capacity, often times, home based in a garage shop, or whatever, with very low overheads. Therefore, price of embroidery has dropped dramatically. And unfortunately, when there is more competition the price automatically goes more down.
In the case of North America, it wrecked the margins totally, and very few, in relative terms, of those businesses are very healthy businesses. And again, of all the businesses I have seen, since 1999, having sold to more than 2500 businesses doing embroidery and screen printing, very, very few owners are taking out even US$ 50000-60000 a year. There are a lot of big ones but, ‘lot’ is a relative term – right? There are 17000-18000 embroidery businesses and less than one percent are big….and the reality in America.
Who uses the GMI Laser or Embroidery Laser? (top)
Answer Anybody looking to distinguish themselves from the rest of the embroiderers, in their area – their direct competitors.
If you look at any major city’s Yellow Pages, like Chicago, Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Calgary, L.A., Kansas City, etc., you will see dozens and dozens and dozens of embroidery businesses and very few have anything different to offer. They are all competing for the same thing, which is based on price.
So by offering the laser you upgrade the ability of your output, options of decorations, ability to offer multimedia decorations and you completely eliminate virtually all small embroidery shops and relegate them to doing high-stitch count and low-profit jobs, which they can very happily do, given the fact that they have very little overheads. And, at the end of the day, people still need excellent service and they need a healthy business.
It’s the embroidery business which is going bankrupt, and apparently, currently has the highest number of bankruptcies than the restaurant industry, at this time since last 3-4 years. So, then they have to switch to somebody else.
How many times have you as an embroiderer been asked, ”how come you don’t offer the same price as Joe?”. Then when you say, “well, go to Joe, because we cant afford to do it like Joe”, and they say “well, Joe is out of business’….
So, it is an old running joke…but it is true !
Why do you need it? (top)
Answer You need it because its embroidery is an industrial aid technology. It is from the (?) time and what it is, is stitching and what is it you’re doing, is trading your capacity for money.
You’re saying, “I have embroidery capacity and I am willing to do it at this price”. And unfortunately, with the types of levels which exist, you’re only getting 2-3 turns per hour on a great day. So, that limits your ability of what income you can earn. That was one of the benefit of having a multi-head machine but, a multi-head machine requires 2 operators to keep it running in capacity. So they are upgrading the turns per hour but, they have 2 people hooping it.
And again, take a look at the hoping device and find out a way to hoop faster than ever before and never ever wait for your capacity there.
Is the GMI Laser affordable for me? (top)
Answer The question that I have is – “Can you afford to hire another person for US$ 13-14 per hour? Are you willing to let go of one person in your company who is not pulling his way and replace him with a machine that literally translates into US$ 13-14 an hour?”
Right now, I can guarantee you that there is NO other laser company in world that has a laser that can be offered at that price range. And, no other laser company in the world, that I know, is also willing to offer you the laser on rentals so that it can prove to you what it can do. So the bottom line is that, a laser will cost you US$ 13-14 an hour, based on 21 days in a month and 8 hours a day. If you use a laser in a second shift, cost is exactly half.
So the question is – “How can you not afford it?” That’s a reality and we can show you those numbers very clearly.
What the difference in the types of lasers? (top)
Answer The number one difference between lasers is ‘air-cooled’ and ‘water-cooled’.
An ‘air-cooled’ laser - the best way to explain it is – the original Volkswagen Beetle did not have a radiator and when you drove the car, it always had problems because, when you drove in traffic, it would literally get too hot. When you drove it on the highway, it was ok, except for (??) which did not get enough air cooling. So, do you remember those days?...Any one of you?......
So that’s the principle for an air cooled laser. You are using the air, within a room, and you’re using the fans and blowing it on a grill (or what’s called a ‘heat sink’) which has ‘fins’. Those fins are aluminum, and they are getting cooled by the air. The problem with it is that, if you work in a facility that doesn’t have open doors and, if you’re working in California, Texas or Miami where it’s hot and humid, your efficacy is less. For every degree of rise in temperature, you have a loss of power of the laser and it is not as powerful as an electric cooled laser.
If you’re in, say Chicago, Toronto, the Northern states, you have a hot summer, but you have a cold winter (and in winter its obviously heated) and there is a difference between the first cut and the last cut, (viz. difference in the cutting when the room temperature changes dramatically). The bottom line is - it takes a little bit longer to get ready to turn on, at the beginning of the day.
But it’s a cheaper laser - less expensive, lesser parts, lesser components and that’s about it !
One of their disadvantages is that, you need to keep the fins on the laser source clean, you need to replace the filters and you need to keep the fans clean because, the minute the lid from the embroidery shaft circulates, it ends up looking like the lid in your dryer and the cooling capacity is reduced and, all of a sudden the power of your laser is less effective.
So, if you open up the file this week, and the open it up in 2 months again, (and its a different part of the season) you have to change your settings, because you don’t know what the heck is going on……Everything is the same but the lasers aint cutting the same! So for entry level laser, I guess, its fine and we can alter that.
A liquid cooled laser – this is like every car sold today. It is 100% cooled with a radiator with liquid. The benefit is that, regardless of any outside factors, there is no contamination and no nothing being blown on to the laser. It is 100% cooled with a (?) chemical, which is like an anti-freeze that circulates in the system.
So you have a chiller – that’s an added expense but, that will run for years and years and years, and that creates, for example, a 21 degree C. temperature, all the time, day and night. So the minute that you turn on the chiller, the liquid is circulating through the laser and you can begin using it immediately regardless of what season and what day and when you opened up the file, etc., as all the factors are the same.
Another important difference to understand is that, the quality of the laser beam is different with a liquid cooled laser than with an air cooled laser. And the best analogy is - think of a brand new Stanley Box Knife, to cut boxes and a Plastic Surgeon’s knife…..
The Box Knife is extremely sharp (you could cut your finger!)….. A plastic surgeon’s knife, which is a scalpel, is a 100 times more sharp, than the Box Knife. It cuts even cleaner. …..
So, that’s the main difference between an air-cooled laser and a liquid cooled laser. The air cooled laser has a beam, which is the size of a hair or a little bit smaller but, a liquid cooled laser has a beam which even smaller, sharper and finer. And what that translates into is, when you cut light color materials – white, pink, light yellow, etc. – you have less burn marks or residue with a better quality laser beam.
If you cut with a finer beam, you can cut faster because the same amount of power is going through a narrow area. So imagine that, I have a big, thick milk-shake straw and I am putting light through it, and I also have a very, very fine, narrow straw and I am putting the same amount of energy in light through it.
Obviously, it is more concentrated in the smaller beam, so effectively it cuts better. You pay a little more for it in some cases but, the longevity, the durability, the benefit and the speed of cutting outweigh that cost dramatically, over the lifetime of the laser. Period.
So now, do you want the Volkswagen Beetle, from 1970, or do you want the one they sell today, which is electric cooled. That is the question, you have to answer yourself (and I guess the answer is pretty obvious in that case).
What is a Galvo? (top)
Answer Galvo is the terminology that we use to explain how we manipulate the laser beams.
So when you go to the convention and you see one of the plotter lasers (it is like a table top laser), there is a laser source, and there is a series of layers and the laser is aimed into the device that moves ‘x’ and ‘y’ and then it outputs it on to your material. You have a stationery laser source, and the beam is reflected into the laser head and that laser head moves along the ‘x’ axis and the ‘y’ axis.
Typically in most types of lasers, the further away you get from the laser source, the more is the power of the lasers. So if you have the laser source which is at the top right, and the (??) area is at the bottom left, you have cutting power there.
A Galvo Laser is uniquely different because (???) are above the embroidery head and we use a series of mirrors that are flickering very, very quickly, the laser beam moves by those mirrors and not by a mechanical head that outputs it. So the laser shoots freely into those mirrors…and we could do a great example here –
If you’ve ever seen a laser show, its one laser beam but they wiggle it so fast, in smoke and the sky that, it looks like an image. And, that is also a Galvo based laser.
Another important factor that you need to know is whether your laser has any sort of beam expander or beam adjuster?
If you take a laser pointer and you shoot is across the room, the point is marginally bigger than if you shoot it right (??) in your head or a piece of paper. The laser by principle is supposed to be straight and coherent but, when you shoot it across a distance it starts to spread and gets a little bit wider. So, a beam expander is a lens that goes in between the laser source and the surface that you are cutting and adjusts the laser to keep as sharp as possible, the entire time.
Some lasers have it and some lasers don’t. It is just one of those bells and whistles features that make a difference in a high volume situation where you want to do a lot of cutting and it is a very big installation.
For example, if you have installed 2 bars or more, then you want to get all the bells and whistles because you notice the difference when you are cutting over 35-40 embroidery heads. If you are cutting over a 6 or 8 head machine, you really don’t need all those bells and whistles and those features. It is just not going to show up in terms of time because when you do are doing 8 pieces, saving 3 or 7 seconds does not really add up to a lot. But when you are doing over 45 heads, you multiply that 7 or 8 seconds with 45, and you do that all day and all night and every shift, it adds up to another several turnovers.
What is 3-D Laser? (top)
Answer 3-D Laser is a 100% gimmick from a sales person’s talk. There is NO SUCH THING. The laser is one dimensional and leaving the laser source it travels along a path and hits the product.
3-D is a complete misnomer and maybe what you are doing is only adjusting a focal beam or adjusting the cutting area. For example, GMI patented a variable field laser. What it does is, we are able to make one laser work extremely effectively over 3 different sizes (for example: 500 X 500 mm area, a 300 X 300mm area and a 200 X 200 mm area). The point is that, the beam stays as perpendicular as possible to the work surface.
When you take a flashlight and you shine it down your toes, you have a nice round circle. But if you aim the flashlight away from you, on an angle, that circle dramatically turns into an oval. Now, if you shine the flashlight in a big circle around you, you end up with a big oval moving all the way around you. And, what happens in this case, is the same with the laser. If the laser is shining or cutting at a sharp angle, the effectiveness of it is reduced because the energy is spread over a large area. The variable feel when combined with the beam expander allows you to have the sharpest sharp laser beam at all angles at all times anywhere in that area and that is the GMI patent. And that is something being forced, actually, throughout the world, where have stopped other companies from copying that feature because it was our patent.
Why are the liquid cooled lasers more expensive? (top)
Answer Simply because you’re adding in a higher quality of laser source.
The best sources of lasers are still made in the USA. One of them being (?), the other one being Universal, another one being (?), (????)
For example, there are cars – there is a Mercedes, there is a Lexus, there is a BMW, there is an Acura, then there is General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and then there is an unknown, some Russian company. So you pay for what you get, and that’s the bottom line.
Currently, the Chinese don’t make a high enough quality laser source to even come close to what the Americans make. So, even the best Europeans use American made laser source. It is extremely important that you can pick a good quality one.
We quote that never ever take what the salesman says, is a fact, unless you take the specs from the laser source. So, you need to have the proof that that particular laser source is being used (for example: Universal or ?) and then you need to ask for the specs sheet from the factory or actually go to its website and actually get the specs sheet and compare the numbers because, otherwise you will be fooled by the tricky sales people for something that is not. And the facts from the manufacturers, the laser sourcers, speak volumes and they tell the TRUTH.
The liquid cooled lasers also have the tubing for the fluid, both to and fro, as well as a chiller which goes in between. So, there is an extra cost and a bit of extra plumbing but that makes a huge difference in the longevity and production of the laser.
What is the difference in the beam size of the laser? (top)
Answer The power of the laser is an important factor but it is not the end of the world. We have lasers ranging from 40W to 200W.
A 200W laser is specifically used in cutting leather. If you use any laser which is not liquid cooled and not in the 200W range to cut leather, it does cut it (and the other 40W laser will cut leather) but it may take 12 passes. However, the leather will stink so bad that it is completely unusable. Let’s see an example here.
You could never cut leather and use it in an aircraft head vest, because it would stink so bad that the passengers will freak out from the smell of smoke. Because, you cant get rid of it. If you use it in your building, as much as you suck the air out of it, you have that smell of the…dead flesh (I guess it’s the best way to say it).
And you need to use that surgical precision – that plastic surgeon’s knife concept - to cut leather to make the most effective cut and the least amount of smoke and damage to the leather.
So, yes all lasers can cut leather but, the reality is that, engraving leather produces a stink that’s so bad that it is unbearable.
And, if you’re cutting cotton and (??) and laces and whatever wearable that you have out there, then all the powers will be sufficient for you. Now the question is, do you want to cut twice as fast or three times as fast?....
At the end of the day, if you ask anyone who has and is using a laser for any length of time, they will always say that more power is always better after they own the laser. But, when you are buying a laser you’re in a dilemma because the price of a laser is appropriate to the power of the laser as well. So, a 40W laser is a very economical laser and functions very well. Now here, you may need a better example…
If you do photocopy and are doing 10 photocopies a day, do you really need a photocopier that does 100 pages per a minute? But, if you are a law office and you do thousands of photocopies a day, do you need a photocopier that does 100 pages a minute or do you need one that does 250 pages (or whatever the speeds are)?
Now the point is, if you are introducing something new, and you have never done it before, and a 40W or a 50W laser does something to your business that allows you to double your output, it is more than adequate. But, if you understand that you are confident in yourself and the technology and where it’s going to take you, then it is better in the beginning to get the most powerful laser, right upfront and never look back !
But, I understand that everybody has their reason and sometimes concerning monies are bad…So, if you look at a lease, the cost is maybe a couple of dollars an hour more for a higher power laser. And that’s a reality.
So, if you want to be budget conscious and it is your first laser and you’re skeptical and you’re scared and everything is new and you’re worried then, get an entry level laser, get it liquid cooled (because it will give you the best (?) for your buck). In other words, a liquid cooled laser will out-power a higher power air-cooled laser any day of the week…and that’s exactly like saying that, take a Volkswagen Beetle from the 1970s and race it against your Volkswagen (?) or Golf today…
There’s just no chance….its just not the same capacity or territory….no matter what anybody says.
There are some people who say that liquid cooled is ‘old technology’ …. But this is absolutely UNTRUE. And you have to ask that sales person that, ‘Okay. So the Volkswagen Beetle is a better technology than the liquid cooled that we have today (and that’s the best answer that I can give you today) !
What makes cotton and tackle twill yellow? (top)
Answer You have to understand the principle that, the narrower the beam, the more accurate is the cut, and thus the less smoke and less yellowing. So if you have a lot of smoke, it is impossible that the white area, which is clean, does not absorb some of it and stain the other area to the left and to the right. The better the quality of laser beam, the more accurate and focused it is and narrower with less smoke and less yellowing and therefore, less damage.
The truth is that some people will use the tackle twill that has the glue on it, because they are using up the original tackle twill that they used to use for their appliqués when they had to do a running stitch, to cut and place them on top. With the laser you don’t need the tackle twill with the glue, and use them on the back necessarily. So when you don’t burn the glue, you don’t create as much smoke, residue and yellowing.
When we use light colors it is a factor in a laser and there are things you can do in the last and set the frequency of the laser, power of the laser, pulsing of the laser and the little options that are there in a laser, and thus you can minimize that effect. Often times, you zig zag stitch or stat stitch to close it up like, lets say, on the front chest design on the baseball jersey, etc. hide that effect very quickly.
How do I identify what power is best for me? (top)
Answer Again, summarizing what I had said before, if you understand that you are confident in yourself and the technology and where it is going to take you, and you have a large number of heads and a multi bar installation, go with the higher power, because you will notice the difference. In other words, if you have a Corvette with 500horsepower but you only go to the office which is 1 mile away, or to Seven-Eleven or the grocery store which is another mile away, and that’s all you ever do, 500 horsepower is totally over-equipped. Though we agree that they both look good but, is it really necessary?…
No. You can get away with a Malibu or a Chrysler or whatever and you do not need much horsepower. So if you have a 6 to 8 head machine, you could stay in the lower power range safely and never really experience a huge difference. But if you are a long commuter and you’re going a long distance, and you need to get there quick, then maybe you should get a higher power laser, because it does make a difference.
Do I need a foil and what is a foil used for? (top)
Answer This is a big mystery, so to speak, or a big misnomer in the industry and the newer companies always misguide people.
What you need to do, is to buy a laser pointer from a dollar store, then take any material that you intend to cut and point the laser at the material and check if any light comes out underneath it. (Here is a little video).
If the light comes through, then you will need a foil. Bottom-line – show that to anybody with common sense or go to University professors, and they will agree with you. If you see the light coming through underneath the material then it will be even more so with a laser. Why?
Because that laser pointer that you have from the dollar store or the laser level that you have from Black & Decker is many, many, and many times bigger than the Padding Laser that we are offering. So imagine if the light shines through, the laser will definitely go through.
Think of it, your material is a screen door and there is a ‘V’, with air going through the screen door in the ‘V’. If you hold that – to the light, to the ceiling or window, and then you stretch it and you can see the light come through, the laser will get through. And that is the end of the story! In this case you will need foil. And why would you need a foil? Because then you wont damage the material later, which is underneath the cutting area, when you clean the shirt as there’s a technique which easily pulls out the foil.
The foils are available in different types. You can buy foil very cheaply from Cosco or – and pull it out and use that. But it is a nightmare to clean because it disintegrates so easily and so quickly that you are actually pulling out tons of little pieces. We sell a foil that’s paper back and when you pull the paper, the foil goes with it, so it is more like tearing postcard out of a magazine and you decrease you cleaning time in specific cases.
Some designs are easy used one way and some designs are easy used the other but, some people just refuse to spend a half a penny more … (the end of recording)
