Makeblock Laserbox Pro // 40W Desktop Laser Cutter Overview 

Agreed 👌😀

So I'm not the only one who just gets boundless joy from these videos?

@@alwaysfallingshort You’re certainly not alone 🤣

Hopefully not this time!

Great work takes time... Especially when the poster also has a life.

@@glennleader8880 Yeah Thats the life...

Yesss, maybe even some CNC mill for good measure?

@@make.anything Yes please!

@@make.anything The 3018 CNC perhaps?

Thanks! Sadly my phone has a plastic backing :P

@@make.anything glass backed phones would be so risky to laser cut/engrave :o. but plastic would be possible too wouldn't it?

@@Ruboka The plastics used for phone cases are generally not laser friendly ones. They would likely burn, yellow, or even release toxic fumes :\ Better to laser a phone case for those!

Missed you too 😁

To this day I still have no idea why Chinese products use male-male usb so often... I get sometimes they want to have a shorter profile like for drive enclosures (though in this case the machine is huge and that’s no excuse), but even then, that’s what mini/micro-b and usb-c are for...

Power connectors and data/power connectors. They seem to be oblivious to standardization. Pretty soon alligator/croc clips will be the norm. See!! Can't even agree what to call a toothy reptile! :-)

@@einsteinx2 It's sometimes done when the main use of the port is to insert USB flash drives, but you want to use the same port in target mode for device setup.

Sounds fun

Right on, thanks for watching Matt!

Thanks! I was weary of making such a long vid but it was over an hour before the final edit :P

Thanks!

Do you have any other recs? My mother loves her cricut and has been drooling over a glowforge but I refuse to buy something you can’t use offline and I want her to try something more affordable first. I need something user friendly for her, but I don’t mind a learning curve and tinkering so long as she never has to do any of it. If I can just let her set the settings and run cuts, we’re good. She’s almost better with technology than I am and loves to test and zero in settings and stuff, so I think she can handle something a bit less polished… but when it comes to multiple programs, errors, deep settings and more important stuff, she freezes up. I’ll do that stuff if need be. You’re the first person I’ve seen who has a decent idea of how to run a cheaper setup. I’d really appreciate the help… I literally just missed her birthday because I was planning to buy her an Ender 3S1 with the added Laser, but you can’t run the laser and printer, you have to manually swap the heads out and physically re-zero and level everything… it’s a hassle if you want to print AND laser engrave with any frequency. I really thought it was a slam dunk, but she opted out. So I have no gift for her… haha Your help would be greatly appreciated!

@@DanteYewToob The market is to me sort of a mess, I feel your pain. Both inexpensive and expensive have a cost. Like in 3D printers inexpensive is of the "bairly enough" functionality with potential to a tinkerer. Often inexpensive does not do the job the brochure says without modification. Expencive is what it is with no real expansion in many cases but does the job as the brochure says but nothing else. Glowforge has done a good job from what I hear at the non-tinkerer market but you pay a premium for that. K40's are popular likely due to the price but they are "just enough" tech. My understanding is to make a K40 a better machine and add 3rd party better software like Lightburn you need to change its controller. Not a tough job but it is a job. There is piles of online info on this type of upgrade. Controllers are where the hair pulling begins! Controllers are designed for a purpose and the tinkerer world tries to make them into something they are not designed for because there may be potential. Somewhat like a Multi-tool, gets you out of a bind but you would pull your hair out if you had to use that screwdriver for much other than an emergency. Basically a tool that does many things bairly good enough and nothing excellent. 3D printers/CNC Routers/Lasers are 3 different beasts with 3 different needs for computational functionality and motion functionality. I'm not personally convinced a 3D printer controller is powerful enough to be both the computational and motion functionality for them. They work for 3D printers which is a very small subset of gcode in a more 2D use with special issues for flow control at historical printer speeds of 100mm/s. CO2 lasers often run at 1000mm/s and potentially has to pulse the laser 1200+ times/sec. I often fall back to traditional ways, why beat my head against the wall reinventing a wheel. Large CNC machines have been doing this for 40+ years, 3D printers for only 10+ years with focus on affordability often sacrificing functionality when used for other functions. Traditionally a CNC machine is a motion controller that takes care of timing of motors and a processor that takes care of conversion of gcode to motion commands. The Klipper project on that point has it right I think. They proved the controller can run orders of magnitude faster if its not doing the gcode conversion and all the math. Sadly Klipper is for 3D printing only so far but has potential to do laser and routers. Klipper could run 3 completely different modules for each specialized function where a 3D controller or GRBL controller has very limited memory and can't do that so well. Maybe future! The way I see it is trying to get a very limited processor on a 3D printer board to do complex calculations of gcode conversion mixed with motor/laser timing is very similar to trying to get your toaster to open/run your complicated Excel spreadsheet. Its just not capable! But it is cheaper! You could make it work! The question is why? I recently tried the re-invent the wheel strategy! I built 4 machines and wanted functionality that was not available in out of the box controllers. The machines are 700W 6' x 12' CO2 laser, 2 - 180W 5' x 12' lasers and 1 7' x 14' cnc router. After a pile of time with stagnant grbl32 projects and a multitude of controller boards (mostly 3D printer boards), about 2 years in time and effort. I found that auto squared gantry on the lasers mixed with full abilities of all laser features was not going to happen and I used Ruida controllers. GRBL worked ok after I finally got a working version compiled but a huge lack of documentation and support and I ran into a problem with jagged circles. I said Bub-bye grbl. The large CNC router is running a FPGA board for motion control and Linux CNC as a gcode processor. To answer your question, I have no experience with K40's as I just built my own but with what I read they are ok with poor controllers and adequate motion components. Putting a rudia controller on a K40 should be the inexpensive ticket! I can not speak for the motion components of the K40 and their accuracy but they would be fairly cheap to replace later once the existing wore out. With the Ruida controller you can get Lightburn and add a webcam to the K40 and I think you off to the races but with some startup tinkering. You might be able to convince a Chinese manufacturer to put the supported Ruida controller in for you if your not comfortable with that. I'm personally not convinced of the diode laser path, I did some tinkering there also. One of the large tables was built with a diode laser to cut corplast (corrugated plastic). Ya that ended abruptly. I read that diode lasers power drops off over time but did not know the extent until this test. On small projects you wouldn't notice really, just over time increase the power setting and not know why. A note on Ruida, I am not really sure whats in the box! I don't know if the file sent to it is "pre" processed to offload its processor or if its gcode like. I'm sure it breaks some of the thoughts above but it works out of the box and has current support. It also seems that many people are happy with them after the conversions.

I mean it's a pretty uncommon occurrence but I tried to mention everything!

Can you share which machine did you get please? I'm going crazy about trying to find one that really works and not even the pricey ones seems to be reliable. I just want engrave on birchwood.

You mean to stain the wood before or after cutting? It would be cool to dye just the top surface and be able to cut it away

I'm testing Gweike next :)

How much is this vs the beambox kickstarter?

Thankfully this can operate entirely offline! The trend of making *everything* a subscription is definitely concerning

Whoops! I'll post the eye on instagram of it looks cool, or maybe it could be a bigger project in the future too 😉

Ooh, that sounds super handy!

Gotta save the intricate stuff for it's own video 😉

wet newspaper where? On top of the glass while engraving?