The crank sensor should be centered perfectly on the wheel in order to make sure you get the same signal out of the sensor every time. In practice though, that is difficult to achieve, and it is easy to be off by .050" or more. With the thin wheel, a .050" movement of the sensor towards the front or rear of the engine will put the active sensing element of the sensor at the edge of the wheel; this makes for unreliable sensing. On my wheel, there is plenty of room towards the front or rear to accomodate minor misalignment, or vibration, of the sensor.
Also, magnetically a trigger wheel tooth with a larger area (as the sensor looks at the tooth) will result in a larger signal at the sensor. So again, variations in airgap or movement forward or rearward will have less effect on the sensor's output than if the trigger wheel tooth has a smaller mass. My wheel has teeth with a larger area just by virtue of the width of the tooth, so it will provide a more robust signal.
All other things being equal, a wheel with a larger diameter should provide more precise sensor signals. In that respect, the laser cut wheel has an advantage over my wheel. Except that in my case, the larger diameter wheel is harder to package with the other components at the front of the engine. So, I actually couldn't even use the larger diameter wheel shown; I would need to get one of the smaller diameter ones. I put that one in the photo because it is the only example of a 36 tooth laser cut wheel that I have on hand; the point was that the laser cut wheel is so thin as to be potentially problematic. Of course, if you can guarantee perfect alignment and vibration free operation, that wheel would work fine.
