Often the mechanism is not doing existing work faster. It is taking on work you currently turn down or send out, and in some shops running contract cutting or welding for others nearby.
Whether that adds up depends on your rates, your volume, and what the machine actually displaces. Those variables differ enough between shops that a payback figure calculated somewhere else tells you nothing reliable about yours.
We can build that model with your numbers. We would rather show you the arithmetic and let you test the assumptions than quote a payback period you have no way to check.
Financing can be arranged, and it is worked through during the quote process.
We do not publish fixed rates, terms or payment examples here, for a straightforward reason: they depend on the system, the structure you want, your business and the lender, so any number shown on this page would not be the number on your agreement. Publishing one would only make the real quote look like a change of terms.
Ask for financing to be included when you request a quote and it will be worked out alongside the machine specification.
Every Vantix FLC (fiber laser cutting) system ships with a 2-year warranty, 5-day on-site training, spare parts stocked in Lumby, BC rather than overseas, a 24/7 Canadian support line, and a 48-hour on-site response commitment across Western Canada. Installation and commissioning by the Vantix team are included as well.
Buy the bed that matches the sheet stock and parts you actually run, not the biggest one available. A 5 ft × 10 ft standard bed covers full-sheet stock for most fabrication shops. The 12 ft × 60 ft configurable range earns its cost only when your parts or plate regularly exceed a standard sheet, so size for your busiest job, not your biggest one-off.
Yes. Plan for more than the bed dimensions: the frame, control cabinet, dust extraction, and clearance for loading and unloading material all add to the real floor space a system occupies. The usable cutting envelope is also slightly smaller than the raw bed size once clamping and lead-in margins are accounted for, so measure the room the machine will actually occupy, not just the cutting-area spec.
Vantix's fiber laser cutting platform configures up to 12 ft × 60 ft for long plate and oversized parts, on the same 3 kW to 60 kW platform as the standard 5 ft × 10 ft bed. The long-bed range is built for structural, marine and heavy-equipment work that exceeds a standard sheet.
Vantix's standard fiber laser cutting bed is 5 ft × 10 ft (1.5 m × 3 m), matching a full 5×10 sheet, across the full 3 kW to 60 kW power range. It is the format most Canadian fabrication shops already buy sheet stock in, which is why it is the default configuration.
Fiber laser cutting has no cutting consumables in the plasma sense, no electrodes, nozzles or swirl rings burning through every one to three hours of arc time. Ongoing maintenance is protective lens covers, assist gas nozzles and periodic optics cleaning, along with normal motion-system upkeep on the linear guides and servo drives.
Motion control uses YASKAWA high-performance servos, running on 35 mm black-chrome-plated Airtac linear guides. The machine bed is 12 mm welded steel, stress-relieved and verified by finite element analysis.
These are the components that determine whether a machine still holds its accuracy after a few years of three-shift production, rather than only on the day it is commissioned. They are worth asking any vendor about by name, because a general reliability claim is not checkable and a component list is.
Vantix fiber laser sheet cutting systems hold a positioning accuracy of plus or minus 0.03 mm.
In practice that shows up as consistent part-to-part repeatability across a nest, and less fettling downstream. It matters most on assemblies where several cut parts have to fit together, because tolerance stack-up is what turns a small deviation into a fit-up problem at the weld bench.
If tolerance is the deciding factor for you, the most useful test is your own part cut on the machine, not a spec line.
The standard cutting area is 5 ft x 10 ft (1.5 m x 3 m), and the platform is configurable up to 12 ft x 60 ft.
Bed size is usually driven by the stock you buy rather than the parts you cut. If you already purchase oversized plate, a larger bed removes a cut-to-size step upstream. If you buy standard sheet, the standard bed is normally the better use of floor space, and the money is better spent on power.
Vantix fiber laser cutting systems are offered in 3, 6, 10, 12, 20, 30, 40 and 60 kW configurations.
Higher power does more than extend maximum thickness. It also raises cutting speed on thinner material, so the right choice depends on your thickest regular part, your material mix, and how many hours a day the machine needs to be productive. Shops running mostly light and medium gauge often land lower in the range; plate-heavy and high-throughput shops land higher.
Send us a representative part mix and we will suggest a starting configuration.
Stainless steel, carbon steel and galvanized steel, plus aluminum. Copper and brass are supported at 3 kW.
The low heat input also makes the process practical in places conventional welding struggles: near heat-sensitive components, on thin-to-thick joints, and on finished or coated assemblies where distortion would be visible.
Yes. Copper, brass and aluminum are all on the supported material list for Vantix fiber laser cutting systems.
Reflective metals were a genuine constraint for older CO2 laser technology, which is where the concern originally comes from. The fiber wavelength is absorbed far more efficiently by these metals, which is why they sit within normal operating range on a modern fiber machine.
If reflective material is a large share of your work rather than an occasional job, say so during sizing so the configuration accounts for it.
At the top 60 kW configuration, published capability is up to 5 in (127 mm) in steel, up to 3.5 in (89 mm) in stainless, and up to 2.5 in (64 mm) in aluminum.
Two cautions on those numbers. They are maximums for the highest power level in the range, not a general figure, and a lower-power machine cuts proportionally thinner. Maximum thickness and production-speed thickness are also different numbers, and the second one usually matters more to a shop that has to hit a delivery date.
Ask us to confirm the figures against the documentation for the specific configuration you are considering.
Vantix fiber lasers cut steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass and titanium.
Material capability and thickness capability are two separate questions. A machine that cuts a metal at all will not cut every gauge of it, and achievable thickness varies with the power level configured on your machine. Tell us the metals and gauges you run most often and we will confirm what a given configuration will hold in production, rather than at its maximum.
The HPM bed is built from modular 20 ft sections and extends up to 200 ft.
Because it is sectional, the machine can be specified for the beam lengths you handle now and lengthened later rather than replaced. That is a genuinely useful property for a structural shop, where the length of work you win tends to grow with the capability you install.
Motion components are rated IP67, on a stress-relieved welded bed with side-mounted rails.
Yes. The HPM cutting head, a BLT442P with an AB-axis, bevels continuously through plus or minus 45 degrees. It produces straight cuts, V-cuts, Y-cuts and finished weld-joint preparation, with integrated auto-focus and zoom.
Cutting the bevel in the same setup removes the secondary grinding station entirely. In most structural shops that station is the constraint the weld team waits on, not the cutting itself, so removing it changes throughput more than a faster cutting speed would.
HPM is Vantix's dual-station structural profile cutting platform.
The front station processes structural profile, including H-beam, I-beam, channel and angle. The rear station handles flat sheet and plate, and the two stations can run synchronously rather than waiting on each other.
It uses a 5-axis cutting head with a continuous plus or minus 45 degree bevel range, which means weld-joint preparation happens during cutting rather than at a separate grinding station afterward. For a structural shop that is usually the difference the machine is actually bought for.
Semi-automatic loading handles 6 to 7 tubes per cycle, with bundle loading available as an option.
Tail waste is near zero on the 3-chuck configuration and reduced further on the 4-chuck, which matters more than it first appears: on expensive alloy tube the offcut at the end of every stick is a recurring material cost, not a one-time loss.
On long production runs the loading method usually has more effect on parts per shift than cutting speed does, because the machine only earns while material is in front of it.
Positioning accuracy on Vantix tube and profile systems is plus or minus 0.05 mm, with chuck rotation running from 120 to 150 rpm.
Servo follow-up support is what holds that accuracy on long, thin-wall tube. Without it, unsupported material deflects under its own weight and the cut drifts along the length, which is the failure mode that separates a tube laser spec sheet from tube laser results.
Yes. Miter cuts, copes, hole patterns and notches come off the machine already in place, so tube arrives at the weld bench as a finished, weldment-ready part.
That removes the layout-and-mark step that normally sits between design and welding. It is worth noting that this step is skilled time rather than machine time, which is why eliminating it usually frees your most constrained people rather than just shifting work around the shop.
Accurate fit-up also shortens the welding itself, because there is less gap to fill and less correction after tacking.
Beyond round tube, Vantix tube and profile systems cut square and rectangular tube, plus structural shapes: H-beam, I-beam, C-channel, angle and Z-profile.
Mixed-profile work is where a tube laser earns out fastest. Each shape would otherwise need its own fixturing, its own layout time and often its own operator know-how, and that setup overhead is what makes short runs uneconomic by conventional methods.
Vantix tube lasers are available in 2-chuck, 3-chuck and 4-chuck configurations.
A 2-chuck machine covers standard tube work. A 3-chuck adds support for long, lighter workflows where material yield matters, and tail waste drops to near zero. A 4-chuck is for ultra-long, thin-walled or large-diameter tube, where unsupported span is the thing actually limiting accuracy.
The right count is decided by your longest and thinnest work, not your average job, because that is where an under-supported machine gives up accuracy first.
Vantix tube and profile systems handle tube up to 48 ft (14 m) long and round tube up to 40 in (1000 mm) in diameter. Square and rectangular sections go up to 36 x 36 in (900 x 900 mm), with wall thickness up to 1 in (25 mm) depending on material.
Those are platform maximums. The configuration quoted for you is matched to the sizes you actually run, because chuck count and machine length are specified per order rather than fixed across the range.
Operators reach working proficiency in days. TIG takes months.
That difference is the main reason shops buy the technology. It separates welding capacity from the supply of certified welders, so you can add output without competing for a labour pool that is not growing.
Results are also more consistent between operators, because much less of the outcome depends on hand technique. That tends to matter most on repeat production work, where variation between welders shows up as variation in the finished product.
The handheld head runs four modes: weld, clean, light cut and seam-clean.
The cleaning modes matter more than they sound. Pre-weld cleaning and post-weld seam cleaning are normally separate operations with separate equipment, so doing them with the same head means the part does not move between stations and the operator does not change tools between steps.
Single-wire feed is standard, with dual-wire available as an option.
Single-pass capability is up to 0.24 in (6 mm) at 1.5 kW, up to 0.31 in (8 mm) at 2 kW, and up to 0.39 in (10 mm) at 3 kW.
Most shops buy on the joints they run every day rather than the thickest joint they can imagine. Laser welding's advantage is largest on thinner material, where conventional heat input causes the distortion that forces straightening and rework, so sizing up for an occasional heavy joint often buys capability in the wrong place.
Vantix handheld laser welders are available air-cooled in 1.5, 2 and 3 kW, and water-cooled in 2 and 3 kW.
Cooling type is a separate decision from power. Air-cooled units are lighter and easier to move around a shop or between sites; water-cooled units are built for sustained high-duty-cycle production. The deciding question is usually how much of the shift the welder is actually running, not how thick the material is.
Both configurations ship with the same 4-in-1 multi-function head.
Vantix laser cleaning systems, both pulsed and continuous, prepare surfaces up to the SP-10 near-white blast standard, with no grit, chemicals or hazardous waste. That places the finish in the same cleanliness band shops specify for coating and paint adhesion, achieved without abrasive media or chemical stripping and without the associated waste stream.
No. The laser energy is absorbed by the contamination sitting on the surface but reflected by the clean base material underneath, so the process is self-limiting and stops naturally once the surface is clean. This holds on both pulsed and continuous configurations, which is what makes laser cleaning a non-destructive alternative to grit blasting and chemical stripping.
Vantix's pulsed cleaning line is air-cooled at 200 W and 300 W, and water-cooled from 500 W through 1000 W and 2000 W. The 500 W step is the crossover point: below it, pulsed systems are compact, plug-and-go and portable; at 500 W and above they need a water-cooling loop, as every continuous system (2 kW and 3 kW) does.
Both remove rust through the same selective mechanism, so the right choice depends on the job. Continuous systems at 2 kW and 3 kW suit large-area, high-volume rust removal where throughput matters most. Pulsed systems from 200 W to 2000 W suit detail work, pre-weld prep and rust removal on heat-sensitive or heritage parts, where scan-pattern and pulse control limit heat input into the substrate.
Both continuous and pulsed laser cleaning strip contamination by the same selective mechanism, but they control heat very differently. A continuous-wave system delivers steady, uninterrupted energy for high-throughput stripping of large, uniform areas. A pulsed system fires the beam in short, high-peak-power bursts with cooling gaps between them, which gives finer control over heat input into the part and makes it the safer choice on delicate, heat-sensitive or heritage surfaces.
Yes. Both series are automation-ready over EtherCAT and Profinet, so the head can be mounted on a robot or gantry and driven from a cell controller rather than held by an operator.
Operator-facing controls include eight selectable scan patterns, a maximum scan width of 300 mm, and a touchscreen HMI with dynamic alarm display. Dual red-light preview shows the scan area before the laser fires, which matters as much in a fixed cell as in the hand: it is how you confirm the part is positioned correctly without a test pass.
Yes. Vantix laser cleaning systems reach up to SP-10 near-white metal blast standard.
That is the surface preparation level most industrial coating specifications call for, which means laser cleaning can satisfy the specification itself rather than serving only as a touch-up method between blast operations.
The difference in practice is containment. Reaching the same standard without grit means no blast enclosure, no media recovery and no contaminated abrasive to dispose of, which is often what decides whether prep can be done in-house at all.
Laser cleaning works by selective absorption. Contaminants such as rust, paint, coatings and oxide absorb the laser energy and vaporize, while the underlying metal reflects far more of it and is left intact.
Because nothing touches the surface, there is no abrasive media, no chemical stripper, and no contaminated grit or chemical runoff to dispose of afterward. What comes off is captured as particulate rather than mixed into spent blast media, which is usually the larger disposal problem.
The practical consequence is that cleaning can happen in places blasting cannot: indoors, near assembled equipment, and on parts that cannot be moved to a booth.
Two series. Continuous-wave systems come in 2 and 3 kW for high-throughput industrial refurbishment. Pulsed systems come in 200 W, 300 W, 500 W, 1000 W and 2000 W for precision work, mold cleaning and heritage restoration.
Continuous is chosen for area covered per hour. Pulsed is chosen for control over how much energy reaches a delicate substrate, which is what makes it usable on surfaces a continuous beam would mark.
Pulsed units at 200 to 300 W are air-cooled; 500 W and above are water-cooled.
A 2-year warranty, spare parts stocked in Canada rather than overseas, and 24/7 Canadian phone support apply to all five Vantix product lines without exception. Five-day on-site training and a 1-year spare parts kit are published for the fiber cutting, tube and profile, and structural profile lines specifically, so confirm those two items in writing when quoting the handheld welding or laser cleaning lines.
Routine tasks like lens inspection, wire and gas swaps, and keeping the bed and dust collection clear are self-maintain items most shops handle in-house. Anything touching beam alignment, positioning accuracy, servo or motion faults, or persistent HMI alarms is a call-service item, and it is worth calling the 24/7 line before opening the housing on anything under warranty.
Parts ship from Vantix's Lumby, BC facility with a published 1 to 3 day delivery window for Western Canada. Outside Western Canada, parts still ship domestically from Lumby rather than from overseas, but no delivery window is published, so confirm the timeline for your postal code in writing.
No. The 48-hour scheduled on-site response is published for Western Canada only. Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada have no published on-site response time; attendance there is arranged case by case. Phone support, same-day remote diagnostics and domestic parts shipping from Lumby, BC still reach every province with no geographic limit.
Support scope, training, parts coverage and response commitments are set out in the quote package and the customer agreement for your specific system and location.
We keep those specifics out of a general FAQ deliberately. A support commitment is only worth anything if it is written into your agreement, and the right arrangement for a shop two hours from Lumby is not the same as one for a shop in Atlantic Canada. A number published on a web page is not a commitment to anyone.
Ask for it in writing at quote stage. That advice holds for every vendor you are evaluating, not just this one.
Fiber lasers are mechanically simpler to maintain than CO2 lasers, plasma tables or waterjets. There are no laser gases, no mirrors to align, and no abrasive consumables to buy and dispose of.
Routine work is mostly protective lens and nozzle inspection, filter changes, checking the chiller, and keeping the bed and rails clean. The consumables that do wear are inexpensive relative to plasma tips and waterjet abrasive.
Maintenance intervals and the consumable schedule for your specific configuration are documented with the machine.
Certification status is model-specific and is confirmed with documentation during quoting, rather than claimed as a blanket statement across the range.
If your facility, your insurer or your jurisdiction has a specific requirement, tell us what it is early and we will provide the documentation for the exact model and configuration you are considering.
Compliance decisions should be made against that documentation and against your local authority having jurisdiction, not against marketing copy on a website. Any vendor who answers this question with a single word rather than a document is not giving you something you can rely on.
The HPM ships with high-sensitivity light curtains, zoned PLC-controlled dust extraction and active workpiece compensation.
The light curtain arrangement is specified to be sign-off ready for procurement and safety review, which matters when a machine has to clear an internal safety process before it can be commissioned. That process is a common and avoidable source of delay between delivery and first production.
Site-specific requirements still need to be reviewed with your own health and safety authority, since jurisdiction and insurer requirements vary.
Vantix is based at 1431 Dyffryn Road, Lumby, British Columbia, with a showroom where systems can be seen running on real material.
Sales are nationwide across Canada. If you are outside British Columbia, the useful thing to establish early is how service, parts logistics and installation would work for your specific location, because those arrangements are set out per order rather than assumed from a map.
Ask for that detail in writing at quote stage, whatever vendor you are talking to.
Vantix publishes a CAD price ladder for handheld laser welding starting at $32,000. Cutting, tube, structural and cleaning systems are configured to order, because bed size, power level and automation change the price too much for one honest number. See what industrial lasers cost in Canada for what drives each quote.
It depends on the job, not the machine class. Pulsed systems trade throughput for control, which suits precision work such as weld prep, mold cleaning and heritage restoration. Continuous systems trade control for throughput, which suits large-area rust and paint stripping. See pulsed vs continuous laser cleaning for the full breakdown.
Not in one machine, but the handheld welding line comes closest: its head runs weld, clean, light-cut and seam-clean modes without a tool change. For dedicated cutting capacity across sheet, tube or structural stock, that is a separate line from the welding and cleaning platforms.
TPC uses a chuck system that rotates tube and pipe stock through the cut. HPM is a dual-station platform: one station cuts structural profile like H-beam, I-beam, channel and angle, and a second station cuts flat sheet and plate at the same time, with bevel-cutting capability for weld prep. If beam and channel dominate your mix, start with HPM. If round or shaped tube dominates, start with TPC.
Start with the job, not the machine. Cutting material apart, joining it together, and stripping a surface are three different jobs. Cutting splits further by stock form: flat sheet and plate points to fiber laser cutting, round or shaped tube points to tube and profile cutting, and structural shapes like beam and channel point to structural profile cutting. Joining points to handheld laser welding, and surface stripping points to laser cleaning.
Yes, and it is worth doing. The showroom in Lumby, British Columbia has cutting, welding and cleaning systems available to run.
Bring your own material and your own drawings. A machine cutting a vendor's demo part tells you very little, because that part was chosen to suit the machine. The same machine cutting your part, at your thickness, in your alloy, tells you almost everything you need to know.
Book ahead so the right configuration is set up and the material is ready when you arrive.
Four things tell us almost everything: the materials you run, the thickness range, your monthly volume, and where the current bottleneck actually is.
That last one matters most and is the one most often skipped. A shop that is slow because tube prep is manual does not need a faster sheet cutter, and a shop losing days to weld distortion does not need more cutting capacity. Buying against a bottleneck you have not identified is the most common way a good machine produces a disappointing result.
Send those four and we will recommend a starting configuration rather than guessing at a model.
Compare the whole risk position rather than the sticker price. A used machine typically carries unknown maintenance history, no warranty, no included training or installation, and a laser source with an unknown fraction of its service life already used.
The single most useful thing you can do before buying used is establish the hours on the laser source and whether it has ever been replaced. It is the most expensive component in the machine and the one least visible on a walkaround inspection, so it is where an apparently good deal most often turns.
Used can absolutely be the right call, particularly as a second machine or for a shop with the skills to service it. It is a different purchase, not simply a cheaper one.
The purchase price will usually be lower, and for some buyers that is the correct trade.
The questions worth answering before deciding are practical ones. Who installs and commissions the machine. Who trains your operators. Where replacement parts ship from and how long they take to clear customs. Who you call at two in the morning on a production night. And what recourse exists if the machine does not perform as described.
Shops with real in-house maintenance depth often absorb all of that and do well. Shops without it frequently do not discover the difference until the first unplanned stop. The honest advice is to price the answers to those five questions, not just the machine.
Compare on the things that actually differ in your situation rather than on brand reputation. Four questions do most of the work: does the configuration genuinely fit your part mix, how far do service and spare parts have to travel to reach you, what happens to your schedule during an unplanned stop, and what is the cost over the life of the machine rather than at purchase.
A premium brand is often the right answer. If you are already standardized on one platform, if a customer or contract specifies it, or if you are close to a service centre that has proven responsive for you, those are legitimate reasons and no comparison overturns them.
Where we argue our case is service distance and configuration fit. Where that is not your constraint, we would rather you bought the right machine than ours.
Handheld laser welding runs about 4 times faster than MIG or TIG on comparable joints.
The speed comes from a concentrated energy source and much lower heat input. The lower heat input is arguably the bigger effect: less distortion on thin sheet means less post-weld straightening, and cleaner welds mean less grinding and polishing.
On thin stainless the finishing time saved is often larger than the welding time saved, which is why a straight arc-time comparison usually understates the difference.
On comparable material, fiber laser cutting runs up to 80% faster than plasma, and holds a much tighter positioning accuracy of plus or minus 0.03 mm with a smaller heat-affected zone.
The practical differences are edge quality and secondary work. Laser-cut edges usually need less dressing before welding or finishing, and a narrower kerf allows tighter nesting and better material yield across a sheet.
Plasma still has a real cost argument on very heavy plate where edge quality is not critical and the parts go straight to a structural weld. The honest comparison is your part mix, not a headline number.
The most common uses are weld preparation, paint and rust stripping, mold cleaning, heritage restoration, and mining and MRO equipment refurbishment.
Supported substrates include steel, stainless, aluminum, bronze and titanium. Pulsed systems extend to cast iron, stone, concrete and wood, which is what makes restoration and masonry work practical rather than only metal cleaning.
If you have a surface that is currently blasted, stripped with chemicals, or cleaned by hand, it is worth testing on a sample before assuming which category it falls into.
