If you're here for perioral CO2 laser information, or you need an aftercare CO2 laser routine for a skin procedure, stop reading. That's not my world. I'm a metal fabrication shop owner, not a clinician. But if you typed bodor laser tube cutting machine because you cut metal tube and you're trying to decide between a new fiber laser and a less expensive CO2 system, this article can save you money.
I bought both. Over three years, I lost about $52,400 in cash on the CO2 route, and I documented every dollar before switching. This isn't a spec-sheet comparison. It's a comparison of what it actually costs to get a laser tube cutter into a small shop and keep it earning.
What I'm comparing (and the numbers I used)
From January 2021 to February 2024, I ran a used 3kW CO2 laser tube cutting machine — a 2018 model from an auction. It cut carbon steel round tube fine when it ran. In November 2024, after months of slow deliberation, I installed a Bodor 6kW fiber laser tube cutting machine. The comparison is uneven in one sense: used CO2 versus new fiber. But that's the real buying decision now. New CO2 tube lasers are scarce, and fiber machines dominate new sales, so most shops comparing Bodor to CO2 are comparing a new fiber unit to a used CO2 unit.
“The cheaper product in front of you is often the expensive product once it's behind you.”
Dimension 1: What each option cost before the first cut
This is where I made my first mistake. I compared sticker prices.
My CO2 route:
- Used 2018 CO2 machine: $39,500
- Rigging and transport: $1,700
- Phase converter and electrical work (my shop only had single-phase): $3,100
- Total before first cut: $44,300
My Bodor quote, September 2024:
- 6kW fiber laser tube cutting machine with a standard loading table, delivered and installed: $102,400
So the Bodor machine cost more than double the CO2 machine upfront. If I had stopped at that comparison, I would have made the same mistake again. But the first number is only the price of admission.
Dimension 2: What each laser cost per operating hour
I keep a job log and a submeter for every machine. Here are the CO2 numbers from 28 months of ownership:
- Laser gas refills: $8,100
- Optics, lenses, and mirrors: $3,900
- Repairs and service calls: $6,200
- Electricity: $4,400
- Cleaning supplies and miscellaneous: $2,000
- Total operating cost: $24,600
The machine logged 1,042 cutting hours in that period. That works out to about $23.60 per hour in direct costs — before labor, before the purchase price, and before the weeks it sat waiting for a service technician.
The industrial CO2 laser aftercare was the part nobody warned me about. Weekly optics checks, cooling water conductivity, resonator maintenance, gas bottle swaps, and the nagging feeling that every reflective aluminum job could damage the optics. I lost more time to those routines than to actual cutting problems.
For the Bodor fiber machine, I don't have 28 months of data yet. What I can show from the first weeks of operation (November 2024 through early January 2025) is this: the machine ran 341 hours, and direct electricity plus assist gas came to about $1,940. That's roughly $5.70 per hour. It's not a perfectly fair comparison — different laser power, different age, different utilization — but the direction is clear. No laser gas. No resonator optics. No weekly mirror cleaning.
And this is where bodor laser cost actually becomes an honest topic. The Bodor machine costs more to acquire. But by my records, the CO2 machine cost me $52,400 in net cash loss over 28 months. That's about $50 per cutting hour just to own it, before counting what it produced. A machine that runs reliably and keeps its consumables cheap is not an expense line; it's a capacity you can price work against.
Dimension 3: Earning hours — tube cutting and the plastic marking surprise
Purchase cost matters. Hourly cost matters. But what really decides which laser fits your shop is how many paying jobs each machine can actually handle.
The used CO2 machine was a solid cutter on mild steel tube up to about 3mm wall. It did not like aluminum. When a customer asked us to cut square aluminum tube for a railing job, the CO2 machine struggled, and I had to turn down repeat work we should have been able to take. Fiber lasers handle reflective metals much better, and the Bodor machine has been cutting that same aluminum tube almost weekly since installation.
The laser marking machine plastic question
Here's the dimension that surprised me: marking. Search for laser marking machine plastic and you'll read a lot of general advice, mostly from sellers who want you to buy one machine. I almost bought another high-power CO2 laser to handle plastic marking jobs. That would have repeated my original mistake.
What I learned from actual production runs: a dedicated small fiber marking machine is often the right answer for engineered plastics like nylon and polycarbonate. On a black nylon part, the fiber marking machine left a clean, legible mark where the CO2 laser left ugly burn marks. But flip the material, and the answer changes. On clear acrylic, the CO2 laser marks and engraves more cleanly than fiber. There is no universal winner. The only honest advice is to test samples on your actual parts before choosing.
That counterintuitive result changed how I buy equipment. I started the search assuming CO2 was the flexible material machine and fiber was the metal-only machine. In practice, the CO2 laser sat idle more often because I didn't trust it on the reflective metals and plastic jobs that made up a growing share of our work. Flexibility you can't use is just overhead.
Which route fits which shop
I won't tell you that fiber is always the right answer, because it isn't.
Buy a Bodor fiber laser tube cutting machine if:
- Most of your tube work is metal, especially if you want to accept aluminum and stainless jobs.
- You plan to run the machine at least 20–30 hours per week.
- You want predictable consumables and no laser gas supply chain to manage.
- You need marking capability for metal parts or engineered plastics and will add a small fiber marking machine alongside it.
Consider a CO2 system if:
- Your niche is non-metal tube and sheet: acrylic, wood, foam, or similar materials.
- Metal work is occasional, and you have the maintenance capacity for an older machine.
- Your budget really cannot stretch to a new fiber machine, and you understand that an older CO2 purchase price is only the first payment.
If I had to give one piece of advice to someone comparing quotes today, it would be this: stop comparing the monthly payment and start comparing the cost per useful hour over three years. I have mixed feelings about cheap used laser equipment now. Some of it is genuinely capable. But the cheapest machine in the auction catalog nearly became the most expensive decision in my shop's history.
All figures above are from my own job logs, receipts, submeter records, and a Bodor distributor quote received in September 2024. I'm a fabricator, not an accountant, so the classification of costs is practical rather than formal. The lesson, however, is well documented.