Better Chance at Reality Compared to Glowforge?

[Doug Fisher]

An interesting project for an open source laser. The "tube on gantry" design is different. Only 30 watt though.

https://vanillabox.myshopify.com/

[Lee DeRaud]

Looks to be vector-only...just curious: does that limit its market too much to be viable?
(And yes, I realize it's not intended to be a commercial-grade machine.)

[Rich Harman]

Looks to be vector-only...just curious: does that limit its market too much to be viable?

It also engraves, if it didn't I think that would be a problem.

[Frederick Skelly]

Looks interesting, as purely a beginner's tool (which they designed it to be). I'm probably the kind of noob they are targetting in addition to maker spaces. $1800 is an expensive tool for my home (hobby) shop, but I realize "real" lasers cost far more.

Should be fun to watch how this sells. Thanks for posting it Doug.
Fred

[Lee DeRaud]

It also engraves, if it didn't I think that would be a problem.I finally saw that down at the bottom...sort of. They use the term "laser cutter" everywhere; the only occurrence of the word "engrave" was in the speed specs. It's described more like a CNC box with a laser head mounted than a true engraver. Also, I'm having trouble getting my head wrapped around the idea of doing raster mode with G-code. All but one of the example photos they showed could have been done vector-only.

In any case, the listed engrave speed is only 12ips, which is a bit slow.

[John Lifer]

Closer to $1900 and I'd rather buy the 6040 from Ray Fine for roughly that plus shipping and duty and have a machine that would work.
Not some toy, but if they could get funded, they might can make it work... And I agree they have a better chance than GF

[Kev Williams]

I get a kick out of how they just bolted up some guide rails to the sides of the enclosure for the Y axis movement.
That's okay if there's some extra support to insure rigidity, but I didn't notice any...

[Dave Sheldrake]

The two guys doing it haven't been in the industry long but have a fair reputation as decent fellas. They also run Just-Add-Sharks that came out of buying a machine for themselves then bringing in more "to order" for other folks.

The big problem is going to be support..UK wise buyers have a LOT of rights and the thing that kills laser companies pretty fast is warranty and service requirements than cannot be disclaimed in UK law.

Nice looking box, average control, a few novel ideas but a few that won't work well on a laser that small as well such as the case mounted rails (Kev noted above) and the fact the average buyer is going to know very little about lasers and is likely going to be quite a strain on resources.

Over here I've been asked so many times "with all the years you been going why don't you sell lasers Dave?"

the answer is always the same

I'm hardly the worlds sanest person but I'm not THAT crazy

The road to hell is paved with a lot of good intentions ;)

[Sam Gardner]

Another nice looking box laser from Europe:
http://www.mr-beam.org
Might deliver something useful before Glowforge??!!

[Bert McMahan]

Mr Beam is a 5W diode laser. You won't get much production done with that. $2000 US for a 5W laser is hard to swallow. It seems to have some neat features but it's limited to slow engraving or very slow cutting of very thin materials as best I can tell.

[Michael Henriksen]

Mr Beam sell a filter so you don't have to vent to the outside. Is that really a good idea? I'm not sure I would be confident that the filter would remove ALL harmless fumes/particles. Knowing how much gunk is produced by laser cutting MDF I'd think you would need to swap filters very frequently.

[Lee DeRaud]

Mr Beam is a 5W diode laser. ... It seems to have some neat features but it's limited to slow engraving or very slow cutting of very thin materials as best I can tell.


Mr Beam sell a filter so you don't have to vent to the outside. Is that really a good idea? I'm not sure I would be confident that the filter would remove ALL harmless fumes/particles. Knowing how much gunk is produced by laser cutting MDF I'd think you would need to swap filters very frequently.Not really a problem...

[Dave Sheldrake]

The original Mr Beam was routed by export control and resulted in big fines for the maker over their use of a 445 diode.

[Martin Raynsford]

We're making a machine for tinkerers and hobbyists alike, we're not very good at marketing but it is a neat little machine and it works relatively well. It's functional and vanilla, if you have any questions then we're happy to answer them.

The rails themselves are supported by the walls and bolted in a dozen positions along it's length. The gantry is 2mm aluminium angle which offers sufficient support across the entire length (and why we're only using a 700mm long tube)

G-Code is not best for efficient engraving but once we get the ethernet upgrade working the overhead isn't a big deal.

We're not shipping outside the UK so dollar exchange rates aren't particularly relevant.

[Lee DeRaud]

G-Code is not best for efficient engraving but once we get the ethernet upgrade working the overhead isn't a big deal.Aside from bandwidth/efficiency issues, I seem to be getting stuck on needing to use Z-axis coordinates for two fundamentally different things: (1) actual up/down motion (i.e. focusing) and (2) modulating beam power.
Or is focus strictly a manual operation?

[Martin Raynsford]

On the vanillabox focus is purely manual at the moment, but with modifications to GRBL it's possible to route the beam power commands to a different function.
GRBL 1.1 is now laser specific so it does ramping around corners and GRBL 1.1 Arm leaves lots of overhead for extra things like that. (because it's arm based you can also switch between smothieware and Laos too as you desire)