Hi all, in case you bought one second-hand, I bought one new in March 2025 from Amazon and they have just advised me of a EU Recall notice due to the risk of damage to sight. I have messaged Amazon’s supplier so am awaiting a reply. The specific detail can be seen in the link.
https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/alertDetail/10098014.
Sucks! That is the only CO2 I was considering because it was GRBL controlled.
This holds for ANY diode laser and ANY budget CO2 laser on the market. There is simply NO laser available below $3000 that complies to European safety standards. If you buy such a laser, you should be aware that it’s illegal (only legal for individual use at home, selling and buying is not allowed).
So, that’s not a surprise. I can send a long list of similar entries for other lasers. The only reason that you can buy a diode laser in EU is that it is impossible to check every product before it reaches the market. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a single diode laser available here.
And this also holds for all those new budget lasers that state “Class 1 Laser Product” (see xTool and others) on their labels). Those DO NOT withstand the European safety tests and would be removed as well.
What do you expect? It’s you who bought an illegal product. And you could (should) have known before. I don’t see that anything will happen here.
Just continue to use it and take the precautions that you should have already taken before because you should have known that such a device is not safe at all.
The recall does relate to safety mechanisms that can be by passed easily ; Assuming you don’t attempt to do that and the unit remains closed when used then you would be fine.
I have and still use mine, Its a nice unit in fairness.
I run my 50W China Blue with it’s doors and top open quite a bit, especially if I’m working on something.
The ‘recall’ says the problem is due to the lack of a ‘baseplate’ as well as easily defeatable safety ‘mechanisms’
I bought a K40+ from omtech uk just over a week ago, it has a production date of 19-11-2025, and has a fully sealed base :
in fact it’s too well sealed so it’s hard to extract smoke, as the only way for fresh air to enter the box to replace the smoke sucked out is through that small round hole in the wall of the power compartment, and the tiny gap where the finger depression is to lift the lid.
There is a single hole in the base and that’s below the air assist pump that’s mounted to the left of the gantry (you can just see it’s while label in my picture)
this is to let it draw in fresh air from outside the case, no laser light can escape that hole as the pump’s housing covers it.
This air pump is just a fan blower, it’s better than nothing and allows people to use this machine without having to buy and plumb in their own air assist system… which is the point of the K40+… half the shortcomings of the basic K40’s have been fixed when you buy it, for those who don’t want to spend weeks upgrading the machine before they can use it properly.
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As for easily defeatable safety mechanisms, it’s got 2 microswitches on the lid, the first one trips if you lift the lift more than 1mm,
this shuts the whole machine down, so the gantry stops moving, laser turns off and it sends a ‘machine stopped’ error message to lightburn,
To get the machine running again if you do this, you need to fully lift the lid so that the 2nd switch opens and trips the 2nd safety relay, then you can close the lid and press the reset button (below the key switch to ‘arm’ the laser)
And then you can resume / restart the program from lightburn.
I don’t get what is easily defeatable about that, any safety switch can be held down by someone who wants to do so,
if it was a hall effect switch they’d use a magnet,
some more industrial lasers have a car seatbelt type switch for the lid where a metal ‘tongue’ piece enters into the switch housing to operate it… people grab an offcut of 3mm wood / plastic and push that in the switch to defeat it when aligning the mirrors.
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There’s only so much you can do to idiot proof things, people will always find a way to defeat any safety system, so the only real solution is to ban home users owning laser cutters and make them industrial machines you need training and insurance to use… like some places are trying to ban 3D printers because someone might print a gun on one 
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I’d consider this machine safer than the original K40’s that often had no safety switches, if they did they’d have no interlock that locks the machine out when tripped requiring a specific reset procedure… which is a pain for anyone used to using other laser cutters where you can align the workpiece with the lid up, on this machine the gantry won’t move unless the lid is closed and the interlock reset button had been pressed.
but people are buying these machines nowadays that have absolutely no technical knowledge, and don’t realise that even a 35 watt Co2 laser tube can damage their skin or blind them if they did something stupid, so rather than teach people not to do stupid things, some countries just want to ban everyone from owning these machines 
i think it’s the same person who has posted about this recall all over the facebook laser groups, i can only imagine they have buyers remorse from spending £550 on a laser cutter and want a refund.
what do they plan to buy instead tho, a nice ‘safe’ industrial CO2 laser at nearly 10 grand?
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someone on one of the facebook groups is trying to get a refund from omtech as they are scared of the laser cutter and want to buy a cnc machine instead (like cheap chinesium tool bits spinning at 20,000 rpm+ as much safer when they break and turn into a projectile ready to puncture weak human flesh if you get in their way, not to mention the dust produced etc)
but they said they wanted to sell the laser to buy the cnc before this recall came out, so now this might be the perfect excuse to get a refund and not have to lose money on the resale of the machine… only omtech have said no to a refund,
Okaaayyyyy, The OMTech K40+ is back on my list.
Great writeup, thanks for taking the time.
If this size of laser cutter is what you want, then i’d say the omtech K40+ is pretty good value, i paid £527 for mine direct from omtech UK and received it in 2 days,
it was £550, but there are lots of 5% discount codes floating about if you search for them on google.
i have noticed the price is now £599, but i’d still be happy with my machine if i paid that price.
I’ve been using laser cutters at hackspaces since about 2011, from K40’s back then that were dodgy as hell, to dual tube 130 watt / 50 watt machines with beds almost 2 meters by 1.5 meters in size … * delicate engraving gets harder the bigger the tube you have, you can only turn the power down so much before it fails to ‘strike’ and produce a laser beam, something people who buy 100 watt machines usually only find out when they try to engrave things and can’t turn the power down enough to not vaporise the material.*
But my local hackspace is a 90 mile round trip, and that’s got to be too much for me to do regularly, so i wanted a laser at home.
I really wanted a 70 watt machine with about a 700 x 400 bed as a minimum, but i just don’t have the room for one of them right now,
so i chose to get a K40 to use now, and i’ll get a larger machine in the future.
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After looking at all the offerings of these machines, i chose the omtech one as it has most of the more annoying issues the regular K40’s have fixed,
I am a technical person and love building things, but this time i wanted a machine i could just buy, check the mirror alignment and correct if needed then start using it.
I didn’t want to have to spend more money buying and fitting things just to get it working well, like a controller that will work with lightburn (which involves re-wiring most of the machine) or replacing the weak X gantry with one that does not wobble about and sag in the middle, or deal with those horrible external plastic rollers for bearings that collect burnt debris over time and jam up / throw the alignment out,
or the tin foil thin mirror mounting brackets that wobble as the gantry moves, or tube mounts that are usually used to hang pipes on a wall and have zero adjustment in them (save for a few wraps of rubber to shim it into a rough alignment)
and i especially did not want to deal with the typical crappy fixed laser head most K40’s (and some bigger machines) have where you need to balance your workpiece on different height blocks to get it at the focal point under the nozzle.
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The omtech K40+ has a small air assist blower built in was a bonus and one less thing to have to buy and fit,
the smoke extraction is still a pc style fan in the back of the machine, omtech sell an inline fan for £40, and placing that on the end of the hose (with a suitable reducer) would really improve the ability to clear the case of smoke,
tho this machine does not really have enough air inlet points for fresh air to enter and replace extracted air / smoke, but as we have seen with this ‘recall’ the EU does not seem to consider this when they demand laser cutters should operate in sealed boxes.
I’d consider this to be one of the safest laser cutters i’ve used, because it has interlocks that mean you can’t just lift the lid and the machine keeps running (turning the laser off or not)
but that is also a hassle for me having to press the reset button each time to unlock this safety interlock, and as i live alone i will likely bypass the lid switches to stop this, but if you have kids or are worried about laser beams hurting you, at least this machine has these interlocks built in and working.
As well as a flow switch that trips another interlock if the cooling water flow reduces / stops to protect the tube from overheating (again some bigger machines don’t have this simple safety device)
the earthing of my machine is also intact and measures nice and low when tested with a multimeter,
and there’s other nice little things like the proximity switches used for X and Y axis homing, the kind of thing used on much more expensive machines and a lot better than cheap microswitches,
nice fat belt drives for the axis, a half decent axis bearing system (not as good as linear rails, but miles better than the rollers running on a thin extrusion method, or a single rod on one side and letting a bolt head rub against the other sides extrusion to keep the Y gantry in alignment)
And other nice features like a removable panel on the left side to allow you to easily access the Y axis mirror when changing it / aligning it,
another panel you can remove on the right hand side of the tube compartment if you decide to fit a larger laser tube in the future, no need to cut these holes yourself as most people end up doing.
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I’d say that so far my biggest annoyance is the misspelling of one of the labels, it should read ‘laser current’ for the digital readout that shows laser power in milliamps (and shows if the water is flowing ok, tube is firing and allows you to set the max power to the tube and test fire it)
tho it is funny watching youtube videos of people telling you how to use a laser cutter saying that 'you must never go above 18 “mahhhhsss of currency”
I never even noticed this on mine 
It seems I always just read the value, never the label I have to check when I’m back in the workshop
Cant say about anybody else but, I built my second laser myself with not one safety device. Ive been running for almost 4 years now with no issues. I do not look at the laser beam. People should at least take the time to understand these things. As far as CO2 goes…Ive looked into building one but i dont like the power they use. Maybe in the future. There are always people who just cant understand things but will try to anyway and get hurt. The carefull people who take precautions should not be penalized because of a few. Im so tired of these actions taken because of a few.
I wouldnt let this change my mind. Just keep in mind the safety precautions. I have no safety devices on mine at all. I dont even have exhaust on mine. Its been 4 yrs now for me. I have 2 blue diodes. 10watt and 20 watt. The beam is what you have to take into account. Just dont look at it. You will be fine
That’s a little bit too optimistic. One reflection and you are blind. Forever. No offense, but not taking any precautions is extremely stupid, to be honest.
Of course, you don’t need to fulfill all machine directives, etc. But using an open-frame diode without any protection and exhaust is just - stupid.
A CO2 beam is invisible. You do not know if it is on or not. That is why the Fire button is disabled for them.
Saying “stupid” may be a bit harsh. No, now that I think knowing about it, it is exactly right.
What are they supposed to do between purchase and eventually learning about the hazzards? That time window is what the interlocks are for. After that time, we have the “stupid” category.
If ignoring safety is a normal in your location, so be it. But please do not promote that concept in the Forum.
I bought a drill the other day. I drilled into my finger with it. It never said in the advert that drilling my finger with it is dangerous. Drills should also be removed.
Anyone with an ounc of knowlledge knows what these are capable of. People can’t drive cars but they are on the road.
We aint kids. just sell them already, we know what they are capable of.
You can’t look direct into the path anycase, it is below the metal box. You can get a flash maybe. No glasses, no use. Their problem.
the beam may be invisible, but in a way it’s safer than the visible light lasers in that it is blocked / absorbed by clear glass / acrylic, so if you wear glasses you already have some eye protection in place.
but the problem is that these machines could be banned from sale to home users like some countries are trying to ban 3D printers… because someone might print a gun on one,
So i do agree with the comments about not being penalized due to a few people too dumb to realise what a laser is,
but that’s what happens when machines that in the past have needed technical knowledge to build and operate are made so anyone can buy one and try and use it at home, and people have no idea what they are buying other than they think they can use it to make money downloading files, placing some cheap wood in this machine and pressing ‘go’
Hi, a wee tip if you haven’t replied yet. I had the same email from Amazon/rygel. I messaged them saying I’d just return it as I didn’t feel competent enough to install the mod. Although I obviously haven’t got the shipping box (I purchased in October), they immediately offered me £180 refund to keep it.
