[oldguynewatthis]

I suspect that I am one of the first to plunk money down for this brand of laser cutter/engraver. Consider this a review of sorts.

When my wife asked me why I wanted a laser, I told her "It's a toy." I got the usual threat that I'd better use it if I bought it.

The laser is made in China and resold here with Newlydraw and the associated controller. Full Spectrum Engineering's value added is their two control boards, which are best used together and completely replace the Newlydraw control board. The combination has its own software, and once those boards are installed, Newlydraw is no longer used to control the computer.

Replacing Newlydraw are two programs. One is a cutter and the other is an engraver. I only used the engraving program a couple of times, just to test it. FSE provides the Aztec calendar file with their boards/software. They have put up a youtube video showing the engraver engraving that file. They claim that their engraver has a 1000 by 1000 dpi resolution, and I suspect they are right. My results were as good as their video.

I bought it as a cutter. I have been working on a model of a victorian house in HO scale. I probably won't start a business selling them, but the proprietor of the local train shop who is quite picky has seen my work and paid me a complement. The laser cutter may and probably does cut with a 1/1000 inch accuracy. There is no stair stepping in angled cuts.

The really neat thing about the FSE system is that I don't have to use dxf files to cut. I am using an open source program called Inkscape to create files. The FSE software and hardware appear to my XP as a printer and I just tell Inkscape to print to that "printer." FSE's software then comes up if it was running in background with the cut files and waits for the instruction to begin cutting.

Inkscape has a few quirks but once you learn them, you can draw to 1/1000 dpi. According to the FSE youtube videos, the same system can be used with Coreldraw, Illustrator, and Word.

While the system works fine on XP, FSE's software likes Windows 7 better. I have a MacBook Pro running Parallels (which I wouldn't recommend) and XP. It wouldn't work with the system. We did get another Windows notebook to work.

I did have a few problems setting up the system but found the folks at FSE amazingly willing to respond to my emails, even on the weekends. The problems had nothing to do with their two cards, which worked perfectly. Let's just say that the treatment of the laser during shipping shook loose a few parts and misaligned the laser beam, all fixable.

I even got an email today asking how I liked my laser and if I had any problems with it.

i bought the thing as a toy, but I think that it would stand up to production work.

The folks at FSE don't know I am writing this and certainly didn't ask me to. I am completely clueless as to their ability to respond to an influx of orders, but I suspect it is limited.

Anyone buying a laser cutter, from what ever source, should budget for safety glasses of the correct wavelength ($50 each), a fire extinguisher, and a solid table or bench. Read up on what you can safely cut without producing really unhealthful gas byproducts. I bought it as a toy, but it can be a dangerous toy.

Thanks to the members of this board for suggesting Taskboard as a cuttable material in my other thread. It is great stuff for model making if you have a laser to cut it. It was hard to find, though.

Yes, if I had it to do over again, I would buy a Full Spectrum Laser.

[Tweakie]

Excellent report, thanks for letting us all know of your experience with the FSE product.
Look forward to seeing some pictures of things you have made with your new toy

Tweakie.

[oldguynewatthis]

I took some tabletop photos this morning but couldn't upload them because "a security token was missing," whatever that means. Perhaps a site administrator will contact me.

Since I can't upload the photos yet, let me comment about what I have learned about Inkscape. Inkscape wasn't designed to be used for laser cutting. When I thought I had to go the dxf route, I was disappointed to learn that Inkscape only has a resolution of 72 dpi when it saves dxf files.

With the FSE control boards and software, you don't need to create or use dxf files, so that limitation goes away.

The big thing I had to learn was to keep the thickness of the border of any object I created in Inkscape at one pixel. Inkscape wants to automatically scale that thickness if you scale the image which is great for artwork, but not so great for accurate laser cutting. Also, if you scale the border back to one pixel, it scales the image slightly, requiring you to reset the image height and width slightly. Doing that changes the pixel width again. After two or three times through the process you get both the image size and the pixel width you need.

You can open the line and color boxes by clicking on color above the nominal pixel width in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Once I got that box open, I made the fill of all of my objects transparent with that box, also.

If some kind soul on this board will ask an administrator fix the security token problem, I will upload the photos.

[oldguynewatthis]

I took some tabletop photos this morning but couldn't upload them because "a security token was missing," whatever that means. Perhaps a site administrator will contact me.

Since I can't upload the photos yet, let me comment about what I have learned about Inkscape. Inkscape wasn't designed to be used for laser cutting. When I thought I had to go the dxf route, I was disappointed to learn that Inkscape only has a resolution of 72 dpi when it saves dxf files.

With the FSE control boards and software, you don't need to create or use dxf files, so that limitation goes away.

The big thing I had to learn was to keep the thickness of the border of any object I created in Inkscape at one pixel. Inkscape wants to automatically scale that thickness if you scale the image which is great for artwork, but not so great for accurate laser cutting. Also, if you scale the border back to one pixel, it scales the image slightly, requiring you to reset the image height and width slightly. Doing that changes the pixel width again. After two or three times through the process you get both the image size and the pixel width you need.

You can open the line and color boxes by clicking on color above the nominal pixel width in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Once I got that box open, I made the fill of all of my objects transparent with that box, also.

If some kind soul on this board will ask an administrator fix the security token problem, I will upload the photos.

[oldguynewatthis]

I couldn't figure out how to post the photos here so I put them on [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAYAKh2695o"]YouTube - House[/nomedia]

My youtube channel is primarily used to teach my grandsons about various subjects, so this is the only laser cutter related clip. You are welcome to snoop around, if you like.

The purpose of this video is to show the capabilities of the laser, and not my prowess as a model builder/designer. Indeed, this is the first 3D model building I have tried to design/build using a laser, so please overlook any design errors you may see.

What you will see in the video:
1. This is a 1/87th model of a two story victorian designed in the early 1870's whose contemperanous plans I happened upon. It was an 1800 square foot house including basement being offered by an architect for $1800, and less outside the New York area. Gas lighting, instructions for digging a well and building a privy were in the plans.
2. What you see is not glued together. It is temporarily held together at the top by a rubber band. The bottom stays together via a system of keys. I plan to reproduce the rooms inside and possibly light them with leds, so the attic floor and the roof system needs to be removable to access the interior. Otherwise, I could easily have changed the design to make it completely glueless. The rubber band can easily be replaced with a dab of glue at the top tabs of each wall that are currently under the rubber band.
3. At the bottom, I used the porch and back step decks as keys. The porch supports for the roof of the porch also have keys behind them into the front wall. The steps (not shown) will be held in place with keys which I hadn't designed at the time of this version.
4. I made a mistake in the design that illustrates how accurate the laser may be. I should have rounded the width of the sides up to the nearest even .001 so that I could center the tabs at the top and bottom. When I test fitted the model, the tabs didn't fit as I had cut it out. When I flipped the walls so the back side was out, everything fit perfectly, making me think that the laser is accurate to 0.001 inch and teaching me to design my walls an even number of thousandths so that windows and tabs can be centered.
5. The inverted "V" over the porch is intended to (and does) accept 80lb paper to keep the visible parts of the model in scale. The house and porch have hip roofs, I have the porch roof finished, but I left it off for the photos because I wanted to show what the laser can do when it cuts diagonal lines--no stairstep.
6.The roof itself has been a mathematical trial for me, and I am fairly decent at math. The attic floor in the picture is temporary. The next version will have many more cuts to support the "rafters" of a removable roof. I'll make the first cuts tomorrow to see if I have solved the problems.
7. The last photo is window trim (actually, that piece goes around the doors). It is cut from 80lb paper and to get the correct thickness, I will stack and glue three of them for each window. I was careful to place the tabs under the trim that the original architect designed into the building, so there is no need to fill.
8. I still have to design the doors and windows. I have a method in mind. I just haven't done it yet.

Even if you don't like the model, I hope you get a feel for the capabilities of the laser, which was the purpose of this post.

[zax15uk]

I'm glad you found a way to share the pictures, they do indeed show what these low cost desktop lasers are capable of. Excellent work!

The FSE model does have some useful improvements and advantages when using Inkscape, Corel or similar software. In this case the final result would have been possible with the standard (base) machine too, I just mention this for others considering the options.

Zax.

[fullspeceng]

Thanks for the great review and compliment!

While the main assembly is made in China, we remind you of the following differences:
1) The XY table is to our specs. The motors are high quality and engrave faster. The cutting table is also 13x13 compared to 8x8 or smaller on other machines.
2) The lens is to our spec. Other lens are much poorer quality
3) Our lasers have an air assist and honeycomb table. Others do not. Without air assist, you will not be able to cut anything useful.

On the control cards:
Not only is it easier to use and more compatible, the accuracy is much much better. We challenge you to run our demos on your own laser system and post the pictures in high definition to compare. We will post both a raster graphic at 1000 dpi and a vector file. Here is the raster graphic:
http://www.fullspectrumengineering.c...0gen/aztec.bmp

Here is the final result and the quarter for size comparison:
http://www.fullspectrumengineering.c...ztecraster.jpg
http://www.fullspectrumengineering.c...ithquarter.jpg

Engrave this in 3/16" maple wood. Our laser will take about 10mins to engrave this 2.3"x2.67" image at 1000 dpi. All you do is hit engrave it starts within a few seconds.

We will post a challenging DXF file for you to test your vector mode shortly also.

ZAX: Until you run the demos on your laser, you cannot claim your system approaches our quality. Our systems come with both control card options and NewlyDraw by default. It's a before and after test all our customers do.

We are so confident that our software is superior that we will refund $600 to customers that buy our system and prefer to use NewlyDraw over RetinaEngrave by returning our two control cards.

No one ever goes back

[zax15uk]

@fullspeceng, :nono:

I didn't suggest the standard desktop model without your improvements would provide the same quality for certain jobs (your demo files for example) or similar speed, only that the standard machine would be suitable for the basic vector cutting oldguynewatthis showed (model house).

Zax.

[artwood_decor]

What wold be the thickness of wood you can cut with this laser?
Would it vary form wood to wood (with density)?
I am interested in clean cuts in 3/4" to 1" cedar and maple.
Would this machine or the 60W one be able to do a clean cut?

thanks,
Lucian

[zax15uk]

Short answer: No.

The 40W systems are suitable for 1/4" or less, even 60W won't improve thickness much (perhaps 3/8" with the right lens combination).

Clean cutting 1" cedar or maple would be more difficult, I've seen 120W do a reasonable job of 1/2" but some clean up is still required. CNC would probably be my choice as it offers much more than just straight cuts.

Zax.

[mdhoang]

Hi all,
I've never used a CNC or Laser cutter before. I'd like to get a machine make photo sculpture like this example (http://www.hltlasers.com/reference/sculpt.pdf)

I want to cut mostly wood and acrylic. But some of you said that laser cannot cut more than 1/4 in.

So, should I go with CNC then?

Will a CNC machine can do what is descripbed in the link above?

Can a CNC engrave photo like laser?

Any help will be appreciated

[zax15uk]

The example is a raster image printed and then contour cut, the cutting could be done with CNC or laser.

A large format inkjet printer would be required to make the raster image.

The 1/4" thickness comment was for a 40W desktop laser.

Zax.

[mdhoang]

Hi Zax,
thanks for your reply. I understand that in the link I sent, they used the printer to print out the image. If a cnc is used to do the contour cutting, would it cause some abrasion on the image?

I am wondering if the photo sculpture can be made with one machine (laser or laser): first engraving and then contour cutting the engraved image.

I understand that engraving cannot be done in color as the Spiderman sculpture example.

What are the pros and cons between laser and cnc? I'm deciding which machine to buy.

[Laserman FLE]

What wold be the thickness of wood you can cut with this laser?
Would it vary form wood to wood (with density)?
I am interested in clean cuts in 3/4" to 1" cedar and maple.
Would this machine or the 60W one be able to do a clean cut?

thanks,
Lucian

We cut 1" with our 100W with a 5" lens

[zax15uk]

Hi Zax,
thanks for your reply. I understand that in the link I sent, they used the printer to print out the image. If a cnc is used to do the contour cutting, would it cause some abrasion on the image?

I am wondering if the photo sculpture can be made with one machine (laser or laser): first engraving and then contour cutting the engraved image.

I understand that engraving cannot be done in color as the Spiderman sculpture example.

What are the pros and cons between laser and cnc? I'm deciding which machine to buy.

CNC wouldn't necessarily cause any more or less damage than laser, but if the backing is Acrylic for backlighting then I would select laser.

Yes you could engrave a design using a laser, or CNC for that matter and cut out the result. CNC would have the advantage that you could engrave in 3D.

I think you need to detemine your requirements and budget, then selecting the best machine will be easy.

Zax.

[zanthia]

Since this thread seems to be a source of collective wisdom regarding these, I'll throw my two cents in.
I bought the machine back in December in a Veruca Salt moment... I wanted one and wanted in NOW. I hadn't had time so set it up until last week, but I inspected it when it got here. My first cut was a .5"x.5" rectangle on a scrap of acrylic, at parameters within their specs. The next attempt was a jewelry charm (also acrylic). During that, there was a bright burst of light and the machine shut down. The guys @ FS diagnosed a blown fuse, which I replaced. The machine now turns on, but the arm won't move and the laser won't fire. Another fuse? Maybe. The point is I haven't been able to cut a thing and am completely resenting the very expensive table next to me.
Apparently, the point of this thing is to tinker with it (and not actually use it to make stuff).
/rant

[fullspeceng]

We cover all lasers we sell under our warranty so please e-mail or call us at (702) 482-8594 for support. The benefit from buying from a USA company is you can pick up the phone and call a live person if something goes wrong and it can be shipped to you immediately.

Sounds like you have a blown motor driver board which we have plenty of stock in our Las Vegas warehouse for immediate shipment. There is usually a reason the fuse blows and it a blown motor driver board may be the cause.

No need to complain here unless we don't do our job in getting your laser up and running.

[zanthia]

I'm not complaining, just stating facts. Besides, it's a lot easier to vent here, where posts are automatic, than wait for you guys to moderate posts on your boards. My previous post was only to inform people as to the tinker-y nature of your products.

[Tweakie]

Zanthia,

I am not a great supporter of FSE (as Henry knows only too well) but they seem to have made a reasonable attempt to rectify your problem and I am suprised you did not contact them directly by phone when the problem first occured.
If you want the problem resolved quickly it pays to show respect to the manufacturer / supplier.

Just my 2 cents.

Tweakie.

[luckyboot44]

I have a question about the 40w system. What is the full travel of the x and y axis(not the cutting area)? i know if you cut out the bottom of the machine and change out the lens to a 5" you can cut through the hole in the bottom of the machine. I want to know the travel inside the machine.

Thanks for your responses.