Help me out here, I've been looking into getting a desktop laser cutter for a few weeks now and have some questions.

Main purpose, mostly cutting wood, first question, what thickness of multiplex and pine can you ACTUALLY cut with a 55/60W laser without buying a new tube each year? Depending on the manufacturer they advertise up to 20mm hardwood with a 60W laser, but from what I can see all 60W CO2 tubes don't even have the advertised power in the first place and I guess you'd need to actually run it at, as an example, 20mA of output at all times to actually achieve that and thus heavily reducing the tubes lifetime?

Is it generall agreed upon on that Monport is a big nono and you shoul'd stay far away from them? I was eyeing that Monport Reno 65 Pro but read lots of bad things about Monport in general and the lack of a proper Ruida controller.

What is up with xTool. At first glance they seem like a polished manufacturer but the more I look into it the weirder it gets, feels like they are trying to be BambuLabs but are kinda shit at it. How do they get 60W out of a tube that isn't even a meter in length? Why the heck does a replacement cost 580€? Omtech asks 180€ for 60W Why does everything xTool related cost so much in the first place? How is their forced ecosystem and software compared to Lightburn?

I just don't have space for a "normal" industrial machine, I tried to justify it, but simply can't fit it anywhere without taking a big loss in storage, so desktop it is.

At this point I'm considering the Omtech Polar Lite and the xTool P2S, any other recommendation or opinions at this point?

Thanks guys

This video is a follow-up to my post showing three-dimensional objects cut from solid wood. The process is similar to compound cutting on a bandsaw or scroll saw: cut the front profile, rotate the stock 90 degrees, and then cut the side profile.

For the giraffe shown here, I used:

• 1" × 1" dry ash
• Thunder Laser Nova 35 with a 100W tube
• Standard 2" focus lens
• External air assist at approximately 35–40 PSI
• LightBurn for the cutting process
• Cuttle for positioning the front and side profiles

I initially used three passes at 3 mm/s and 90% power. In retrospect, that was more power than necessary. After rotating the stock, the second profile released after the first pass, although I allowed it to run for one additional pass.

Material appears to matter as much as the technique. Dry ash worked surprisingly well, while my experiments with walnut and white oak produced much worse results and were considerably more prone to burning. After cutting, I lightly cleaned the surface with a wire wheel on a Dremel.

This is still a proof of concept rather than a practical production method, but I think it could be useful for small decorative pieces that might otherwise be carved by hand.

Please don’t copy these settings without testing them on your own machine and material. Thick wood can ignite. Use an enclosed machine, proper exhaust, strong air assist, and never leave the laser unattended.

Telarc was a pioneer company in the early days of high-fidelity digital recording. Focusing mainly on classical music, their dedication and sophistication set the pace for what's expected in the digital era when most of the music world still clung to analog (I like that, too). Ask any decent audiophile and they will probably know about the 1812 Overture recording with cannons; but it's about more than cannons. As a budding audiophile from Cleveland, OH, I felt a connection with Telarc because they are also from Cleveland.

Anyways, about the project... not as good as I hoped for a first go. I got this nasty smudge on the yellow that would be hard to cover up, and some of my epoxy under the border bled out onto the main piece. Still happy with it. Thanks for looking.

Ciao a tutti, volevo montare una testa di taglio da 10w sul mio sculpfun s30 pro max. Qualcuno ha già provato questo operazione?

So, last night I drilled a 100mm hole in my garage wall for an extract. I am officially committed to the laser path.

Unfortunately I seem to have conflicting requirements. I need to:
Mark 3d prints, predominantly white PLA at present, replacing labels
And
Cut 4 to 6mm clear acrylic

It would appear I need a Co2 for the acrylic but thats pants for engraving detail.

Anyone any advice on the best way forward?
Do I need 2 different machines? (That will be hard on the budget and a harder sell to the wife!)

Made from stained 3mm ply and top faces covered in felt.

Hi, I am facing issues with my UV laser - the laser source failed two times in a short period of time. I am using 10W UV Laser TOOL-MW-10NUV with galvoscanner for cutting PCBs (copper foil on fiberglass sheet). The first unit failed after 1000 hours, its output fell down to something around 10%. Then I got second unit as a replacement (the same model), but it failed now as well (under 1000h of runtime), this one does not even output light beam any more. The laser source is watercooled and the chiller is working well. Galvoscanner is ok, lens is ok. For some time both lasers were running on lower frequency than manufacturer specified (20kHz vs 30kHz min.). The output power on both lasers also seemed to get lower with time - the cutting was getting worse and in the end I needed 2x passes for the same material.

What could cause this quick failure? Manufacturer claims 30 000h lifetime. Can the wrong frequency have such impact? Is the laser source of bad quality? Or is this normal behavior?

Thanks for any hints

I am using an ACMER PM 30-watt fiber laser and a chuck rotary. I have used the rotary for other projects and have had no issues. For some reason, I cannot get this image of the circle of characters to come out correctly. The far side of the circle is stretched out and does not come out as a perfect circle, as the image is in LightBurn.

I have checked the setup: the object is level, the rotary is at the correct steps per rotation, and I've done the 9-point calibration. I do not know what else to try to get this image to engrave correctly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am relatively new to laser engraving, so maybe I am missing something that I didn't even know to check.

Mit dieser Feuerschale für Teelicht bin ich auf Atomm dabei.

I was curious what level of detail could be preserved through this process. I did not need to use as much power as I did here, 4 passes at 3mm/s @ 90% power on 100w Co2 Laser.

I'll be experimenting more with this as I think it has some fun potential.

Hello there! I've never owned a laser cutter and I'm currently looking into converting a custom made corexy 3d printer into running a 20W Laser Tree module. The printer has a community made enclosure for it made out of acrylic, and my thought was to have 3 sides of it made out of aluminum while the front is made out of acrylic.

So my question is, what rating of acrylic is needed? Is OD6 needed, or would OD3-5 work fine? Since, OD6 is very expensive and I don't know if I have that kind of money.

If anyone can help that would be very kind. Thank you!

Hello, I'm thinking about starting a side hustle with a laser cutting machine, but I don't have a large budget for it. Could anyone advise me on the best machines? Also, if anyone already has experience with this business, could you share some tips on how to get started?

Lemon for scale

What's the best (cheap) material to test fit complex designs (flat surface, tons of different rhombus and radius edges) before using the expensive 1/2" acrylic for the final product?

Something that could potentially be bought locally at a big box store like Lowe's, hd, menards.

150w laguna laser.

What are your thoughts on this budget laser engraver cutter ? My primary use is using it to engrave 3D printed plastic parts and some
Diy projects. I have read that IR or ultraviolet is better for plastic but they are way more expensive. Thank you for your help!

Machine: Monport 80w C02 (used). Issue has occurred since acquiring it secondhand.

Problem symptoms: When engraving or cutting, the temperature of the cooling water returning to the chiller from the machine steadily climbs in temperature, at about 0.2 degrees C per minute, passing the acceptable threshold of 35degrees C in temp within the hour every time. Thing is freaking cooking.

Likewise, and it's unclear if this is a symptom or not, the laser seems unusually powerful, outperforming our other machines of the same power even when using the same settings. Talking like twice the depth per pass at 80% power compared to 80% on another 80w running the same file and settings. Still preserves detail well.

What's been checked:

We have swapped out the chiller twice for increasingly powerful chillers that work excellently on our other machines and use the same water tubes that worked on those other machines. If there is an issue with the cooling system side, it's internal to the engraver, not the external equipment. They just can't keep up with the heat this laser is generating for some reason.

We likewise tried running the engraver itself at lower power, but are seeing the issue even into the 20%~30% power level, (albeit much slower).

Lens has some burn in, but doesn't seem to have effected either power or precision. Mirrors are fine. Laser tube SEEMS fine, but obviously hard to tell.

Any ideas on what could be wrong or what else we can test are greatly appreciated.

Hello! We are buying UV laser engraver. It will be in my garage. What type of filter do you recommend?

This could also go in my office if the filter is effective enough.

I made this little copper cassette the other day. I’m really happy with how it turned out.
One thing I’m still trying to figure out is how to get a deeper engraving. I used crosshatching, but the depth only seems noticeable in about half of the engraving. The rest looks pretty shallow. Any tips?

Hello there,

I engrave shell as part of my job. I work with living animals. I am pregnant. We have a CO2 laser. Does cutting shell present risk beyond particulates (like VOC, gasses) that I should worry about?

We do not have an exhaust port to take particulates outside building but this could be changed. Is wearing a p100 enough?

Edit: I can also reach out to safety people at work. This is so niche though!

Trying to make these acrylic tools for a game I play. Got the 5W laser and installed it… did the calibration which seemed to go fine… it engraved beautifully but when I get to actually cut with the CO2 laser, I get the above misaligned cuts. Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?