Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

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careylee
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Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by careylee »

I posted this in the "General" Aspire forum and thought I'd duplicate here for more exposure. Needless to say I'm not to happy with Vectric at this point. I've always had nothing but good things to say about the product but the way this is being handled doesn't speak well about the company. Every software company I've dealt with in my 40 years in the IT industry would allow me to purchase the 10.5 module with my knowledge that I will not receive the feature enhancements available in later versions. When you don't pay for a new version you only get bug fixes and not features. That is completely normal in the industry and typically after two versions back you can't get bug fixes. In this case I am only a single version back.

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This seems like an odd request for a $50 item but as it turns out it will cost me $450 to get the plugin. Vectric has deiced not to sell the 10.x plugin to anyone and force them to upgrade to 11.x to purchase the plugin. The features in V11 are things that I don't use so I really don't want t o spend $450 for the laser plugin. When I look at the licensing agreement I believe this can be done so if anyone bought the plugin but doesn't use it or their CNC doesn't support it I'm interested in buying it if Vectric will allow the license to transfer.

I inquired about the module almost two years ago and determined it wasn't supported by my CNC so I didn't purchase. Now that it is supported I can't buy it. At the time Vectric didn't imply nor would I think I couldn't purchase the plugin later or I would have purchased it then.

Thanks,

Carey Lee

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adze_cnc
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Re: Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by adze_cnc »

careylee wrote:
Sat Jan 29, 2022 5:17 pm
Every software company I've dealt with in my 40 years in the IT industry would allow me to purchase the 10.5 module with my knowledge that I will not receive the feature enhancements available in later versions.
You might have been very lucky. When Rhino 3D was at version 5 we needed an update for a 3rd party plugin for Rhino v4. By then the maker only supported v5 Rhino and wouldn’t upgrade us to the last version of their product for v4.

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Tex_Lawrence
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Re: Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by Tex_Lawrence »

I thought that I've read that their wasn't a separate item for "Laser Module", but that it was just coded into the main program. I don't recall having downloaded a separate file.

Then you bought the license for it, applied the license code and the feature was available.
Tex — Crooked Wood Products
Now there's a man with an open mind – you can feel the breeze from here.

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Adrian
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Re: Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by Adrian »

If your machine is supported in 11 then there's no guarantee it's supported in 10.5, as has been said the Laser Module isn't a separate piece of software, it's built into the main product and is activated by a license code.

It's bit like saying you want one feature from 11 to be available in your 10.5 without paying for 11. The code isn't there.

careylee
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Aug 01, 2020 2:33 pm
Model of CNC Machine: cncrouterparts PRO4848

Re: Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by careylee »

Tex and Adrian you are both right the code is there and only a license needs applied so I guess what I'm really saying is they won't sell me the license for 10.5. Adrian, As far as the machine being supported in 10.5 it is. The issue with it not working back when I first inquired was that the motion controller didn't have the needed capability. Now that it does it would work just fine under 10.5

I completely understand and would expect that if Vectric would sell me the 10.5 license key I wouldn't get any new features or enhancements in V11's Laser module until I purchase V11 but that's not what's happening here. I feel like they are trying to extort additional revenue from me.

Thanks,

Carey

EdwardP
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 9:29 am

Re: Looking to purchase Laser Module for 10.5

Post by EdwardP »

Hi Carey,

I am sorry that you are unhappy that the Laser Module is no longer available for v10.5. However I assure you that this is not some cynical ploy by Vectric - quite the opposite in fact. Some months after our initial release of the Laser Module, when we had intended to begin expanding the range of support we offered to more machine configurations, it instead became clear to us that too many customers were experiencing problems with some very popular controllers once they retrofitted a laser - particularly when rasterising images (which was an important feature for many). Despite some months of effort, including working directly with a number of the controller firmware engineers, we reluctantly concluded that the structure of our toolpath strategy definitions in v10.5 would not allow us to deliver the toolpath data in the form required by some important controller manufactures to produce acceptable laser performance. These are issues that could not be addressed by post-processor changes alone. I accept that we underestimated the technical challenge of supporting the enormous number of controller/machine/laser permutations out there and we have learnt lessons and made many changes to our internal systems as a result.

While we do try to introduce new and valuable features in point releases (which, as you know, are free to *everyone* who has purchased that main version previously) we never want to make major infrastructure changes or cause file format incompatibility in patches. To improve our laser performance we would have to do both and so we took the decision to incorporate these changes at the major v10-v11 upgrade where similar changes were already required and in place.

Since we took the decision to discontinue the v10.5 Laser Module, we have been careful to ensure that no *existing* v10.5 Laser Module customer has been left unhappy - many were entitled to our generous upgrade policy and simply moved to v11 free-of-charge once it was released.

I hope you can see, however, that we do not want to compound this problem by making any further sales alongside v10.5 now that we know its limitations and understand the laser-specific issues for many controllers better than we did a few years ago. I am sorry for your frustration, but we are just trying to do 'the right thing' here.

Kind regards,

Edward

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