1. Air cooled – No need for external water chiller that requires more maintenance.
2. Aluminum construction – Much better thermal heat dissipation which prolongs life of laser tube.
3. RF Excited Tube – Can be pulsed with higher frequency giving superior raster engraving quality.
4. Permalign patent – a tool less chassis and permanently aligned laser tube making tube replacement quick and easy.
5. Beam quality – The laser engineering team developed their laser tube to work in harmony with the motion system and drive software to give the operator much more control over laser beam performance.
6. Long life – laser tube life runs on average 4 – 6 years of constant use before a recharge is needed.
Disadvantages of Glass Laser Tube
1. Water cooled – Requires external water cooler pump that will need more maintenance.
2. Safety – Glass tubes are excited with high voltage. High voltage that is run through a glass tube with circulating water is not a very safe working environment. Think of the liability for your company and your own personal risk.
3. Poor laser beam performance – Since glass laser tubes are run at 20KV high voltage they cannot be rapidly pulsed resulting in poor beam quality especially when raster engraving.
4. Short life – Replacement of glass laser tubes can be as often as 3 months with average use.
5. Fragile – Glass tubes by their very nature are fragile and high risk during replacement and in shipping.
In summary – Glass laser tubes offer little in the way of any performance benefit as in short they are unreliable, have poor engraving quality and are generally unstable. Their only advantage is one of very low cost. There have been extensive tests performed on both forms of CO2 laser tubes and, as explained above, have shown that metal tubes offer greater efficiency, performance, safety, stability and have a significantly longer working lifetime.