I started with a Ortur S2 LF. It can keep up with my demand. It is very slow and doesn’t cut as well as advertised. I need advice on what to get next that will preform better in the $1,000 price area. I’m mostly engraving cutting boards I make, engraving tumblers, mirrors, and cutting acrylic and project wood. Thanks for the advice
I would say CO2 would be next step.
Thanks for the reply. I also need to keep it in the $1,000 area. And trying to figure out which brand is best for the price
Engraving cutting boards… Deep engrave? Or shallow with high contrast? Extremely intricate?
CO2 will probably disappoint if you want high contrast, shallow engraving and/or intricate detail. A low power Diode will excel at intricate contasty wood engrave. Maintain quality with more throughput means more machines.
If you’re deep engraving and/or color-filling and can live with around 250 LPI, CO2 should work great.
Cutting and acrylics? No question, CO2.
What is your biggest reasonably conceivable workpiece?
I am currently building cutting boards and butcher blocks and deep engraving and filling with epoxy. I like to cut acrylics but it’s not something I do a lot of
That looks like something a suitably sized CO2 would do quite well. I’m not in that market, but I believe your workpiece dimensions are going to put you into a floor model which would greatly exceed your budget.
I’m in the same boat. I’d love a big CO2 and a Fiber machine, but I don’t have the budget or, really, the space.
I am deep engraving (~.030"-.050") cutting boards with a 20W diode running about 4-5000mm/min. It’s not blindingly fast, but I can do a full face engrave (scanning the entire board surface) of a 12x16 board in about 4 hours. A couple lines of big text could be done in much less. I tend towards more fine detail, so I often bump up against spot size and LPI limitations. CO2 would be faster, but really no better for detail. And, of course, a smaller spot means more scan lines, means more time at a given speed. No free lunch. Lol.
Those look nice. Im wanting to go about the same kind of stuff but the orthur was extreamly slow. And co2 is out of my price range right now. Im looking at the atom stack x20 and the xtool 20w and the longer rays 20w. Bout the one decent thing I can find under $1,000
I’ve been hearing really good things about the Enjoywood E20…
I usually recommend the Sculpfun lasers. At this price tag, I’d recommend the S30 Ultra 22W. It might be about $800. For the rest of the budget, you can get a 600x600 honeycomb and better protective glasses.
Advantages:
- huge workspace of 600x600mm
- automatic air assist, one of the best air assist designs I came across so far
- open architecture (nearly all parts can be replaced by standard supplies, no need to stick to manufacturers parts)
- mainboard can easily be replaced by different ones in case of failure
-excellent user support
Some manufacturers have better mechanics, but the laser heads of Sculpfun are known to be best in class, usually.
In general, if engraving is the main task, I’d even check out the 10W class because those provide the best speed/precision ratio. Everything above 10W increases beam size (holds for any manufacturer) and therefore reduces resolution.
I have zero experience with Xtool but from what I see posted here, they seem to be a pain in the arse to get running right with LB due to their…um…unique flavor of GRBL.
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Would you mind explaining that a bit more, please.
The spot size of my 20W diode is roughly .1x.15 on wood. That limits my effective interval or dot pitch, so any design requiring more than about 260 LPI loses definition. Some details are completely obliterated, corners get soft, fine lines get jagged or dashed, etc. This is with a Fill layer. In Line mode, I just get “fat” lines or overlapping if, for example, I wanted to produce something with an antique “woodcut” engraved shading style.
Take the image below. Scale it down so the individual lines are less than the beam width, and all kinds of nonsense happens. Lol.
I have an x-Tool D1 pro - it came with 20w diode and 2w IR lasers. I did have problems at first, but thanks to help from folks here it turned out to be the supplied USB cable - a very cheap fix. As far as Lightburn is concerned, I downloaded the LB configuration file and everything just worked straight away.
It’s true that you have to use the suppled XCS software to do things like a firmware upgrade (which I did once) but that’s all I use it for.
Thank you for your feedback and the explanation.
I was just surprised because I read it or related it to relatively large projects. Here I often find that too high a resolution “lumps” the image, especially from a distance.
An extreme example (which probably cannot be used for wood) is coconut mats. I have made quite a few of them and had to find a setting that gave a nice result and doesn’t take 100 years to make. The mats are 600x400 and with a distance to the viewer of about 150 cm +, the result was that I defocused a lot, about 10mm! and adjusted the line distance and power accordingly. So the resolution becomes incredibly low, but the result is still “the best possible” and the speed acceptable.
PS Your work shown here is formidable, very nice and fine craftsmanship 
High praise, indeed, coming from such as yourself! You don’t know how much I appreciate that!
Thanks…I certainly don’t see myself as particularly skilled, but I feel honored. 
I recently bought a Roly Lasermatic MK2. What I like about it the most is it works in both 10W for finer more detailed designs and also in 30W for faster work on thicker materials with just a flick of a switch. It does cost about $1400 but comes with a full enclosure, honey comb table, air assist, and a built in camera that works with Lightburn. They also have a great chuck rotary and jig table. They have the BEST support out there! You can check them out here: LaserMATIC Mk2, Diode Laser Engraver Available in 10W, 20W and 30W Con – Roly Automation.
Sounds like a good set up for a diode. If I wasn’t married to the best lady in the world who watches over my shoulder, I would buy one of those just to play with. HaHa!
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I just retired and it was my retirement gift to me! It’s been so much fun, maybe your lady could share one with you 
She almost had heart failure when they delivered my Omtec 60W 2 years ago.
Gosh, I forgot to tell her I had ordered it. lol