[mercury049]

I bought an ebay chinese DIODE laser. 50 65cm Area Mini 3000mW Blue Laser Engraving Cutter Printer Power Adjustable | eBay

Built it last night and it actually works quite well. Surprised to be honest. That said, I was not overly impressed with BenBox. Are there any alternative softwares that can control this machine? The controller board is red and small, it's the one on picture 4 on the ebay listing. Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Downunder35m]

Looks like an Arduino Uno, so GRBL should be usable if you can configure the machine for it.
Otherwise you would need to replace the controller with an Arduino Mega or Due.

[wmgeorge]

I have a 5.5 Watt blue laser metal frame kit coming from eBay, PrettyworthShop. Yes I am still waiting, but the vender seems to be an ok guy or company anyway. It comes with some pretty decent software as he sent via email attachment everything needed to run it software wise.
I have a "real" 50 watt ULS laser but wanting something portable.

I looked at the JTech Photonics stuff and it looks to be the way to go in the long run.

My out loud thinking, wonder why a real laser controller DSP panel won't work with the JTech controller and you don't have to mess with a lot of crappy programs like Benbox and the rest?

[zax15uk]

Benbox is pretty terrible, but look for T2Laser or a new program called BenCutLaser.

There's a forum dedicated to these machines (you should be able to find by searching).